|
I prowled the streets all day…determined to trap life – to preserve life in the act of
living. -- Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photojournalist
Growing up in a family that used world atlases and National Geographic magazines as inspiration for family discussions and in a house in which we had a darkroom (my father was an American World War II photographer who taught me 35 mm camera technique and how to do my own black and white printing), it was quite natural for me to become a serious traveler with a camera as an appendage to my body. I found that with my knowledge of photography, a camera could become an introduction to what I enjoyed most: being with people of various cultures. Therefore, I took up Visual Anthropology and received a Masters Degree in Social Anthropology while working in the Mexican-American community of Los Angeles.
I enjoy people, and I study people: I study the character in their faces, and I study their different lifestyles as reflective of the influences of environment and culture; I attempt to capture the essence of who people are and what they do in the performance of life. In order to come to an understanding of the why of life – WHY do people do what they do? - as a cultural anthropologist, the camera became not only one of my research tools but also a mechanism with which I could take life and reflect it as the art of life in all its positive and negative aspects.
I have been on the road since I was 17 years old when I boarded a bus and traveled through Mexico and Central America. Years later, I was asked to go to Nicaragua to photograph the Sandinista revolutionary leaders – my first photographs to be published. I subsequently spent 10 years (1970-1980) researching and documenting village economics in the Peruvian Amazon and traditional textiles in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. I later continued on to India and Indonesia to research and collect textiles...two shows came out of my collections as I curated exhibitions at the Riverside Museum in Southern California and at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa - both incorporating my cultural photographs and textile collections.
After teaching for thirteen years in Los Angeles, California, I became an International Educator teaching multiple subjects in the cultural arts, research and literature. This choice of career over the past 20 years, has afforded me the ability to live and work in various Asian countries including Indonesia, Nepal, Singapore, Japan and India. Since 1984, I have created bases both in New Delhi and Srinagar and for a few years supported myself by designing textiles and jewellery…my company name reflecting my lifestyle: Time Zones Designs International. Eventually, I went back into education, and for a few years was only able to spend holidays in India as from 1996-2003, I taught in South Africa, a country where one gains an appreciation for wildlife in all its beauty - a wonderful photographic opportunity.
Currently, I divide my year between three countries: the United States (where my family resides in California), South Africa (where I have a home in Johannesburg), and India (where in 1992, I adopted a doonga [small houseboat] in Kashmir.
But where really is your home? I am often asked. And, where do you feel most comfortable? Where are most of your friends? These are very hard questions for me to answer, but basically, my home is the world – I am comfortable in different cultures, and I have friends in many countries. I think this comes with my appreciation for and joy of people and my interest in recording who they are, how they do their lives and how they incorporate their environment in the creation of their culture.
In 2007, I published (Booksmart, San Francisco, California) IN FULL-FRAME, PORTRAITS OF GUJARAT, a photography book with140 colour photographs; I am currently working on two other photography books with my own text: A New Vision of Kashmir and Townships of Johannesburg. In May, 2008, I was Staff Photographer for the Tibetan Olympics in McLeod Gunj and will eventually be incorporating those photographs into a series of portraits of India.
I use the camera to discover and tell stories of life - my ultimate hope being that others will appreciate both the commonalities and differences among people as we humans go about doing life… and doing life is simply a reflection of how we all strive for happiness in our own various ways.
The element of discovery is very important…I want and
need that stimulus of walking forward from one world to
another. -- Margaret Bourke-White, Photojournalist
|
