Their village is their world, and more exactly their home is their world. Unless they are attending school, they are almost always within the confines of their homes.
They’re fully aware of the hardships facing them and yet they persevere and endure through it all. In this classroom they could be themselves and act out their creative thoughts. It’s been an honor to be at their side all of these years.
I do miss these young girls and their friends, and have the highest respect for their courage in the midst of indifference and intolerance. Their village is the one in which I sleep during my stay in Uttar Pradesh, thanks to @chmunshadali and his beautiful family.
Their village is their world, and more exactly their home is their world. Unless they are attending school, they are almost always within the confines of their homes.
They’re fully aware of the hardships facing them and yet they persevere and endure through it all. In this classroom they could be themselves and act out their creative thoughts. It’s been an honor to be at their side all of these years.
I can’t imagine taking only monochrome film with me to India and am grateful to have taken the chance years ago… the colors of the shawls and faces in Uttar Pradesh!
This is the reality for this young women, her aunts, her nieces and neighbors. Her community trades in sex, and the women are the products which the men of the community trade.
Our minute of our imagination is her reality for 1,440 minutes each day.
Looking back at my experiences with the Banjara community in Rajasthan, and grateful for their permission to make their portraits. This picture really brings back fond memories of those early days, as we searched for a young girl named Sharda. She was photographed by me on my first visit to India, when I was documenting the great work by Humana People to People India. Ever since that year we looked for her, and found her at this camp when we photographed her yet again years later.
I can’t imagine taking only monochrome film with me to India and am grateful to have taken the chance years ago and especially during last year’s quarantine in Rajasthan!
Thank you Nami Gujjar!
In the beginning, this specific tribe is associated with a foundation school near Behror, Rajasthan. Later they move further away in order to remove themselves from the urban chaos and in search of their more traditional way of life.
This results in their children losing access to the foundation's school, one in which they are enrolled for about three hours per day, outside of their daily chores and work duties. While outside of class, these children collect plastic and so forth in order to sell in bulk later. They also approach certain people for donations in the streets.
As noted in Wikipedia, 'women are known to wear colorful and beautiful costumes and have tattoos on their hands.The dress is considered fancy and attractive by Western cultures. They use mirror chips and often coins to decorate it. Women put on thick bangles on their arms [Patli].Their ornaments are made up of silver rings, coins,chain and hair pleat are tied together at the end by Chotla.'
After we finished with the photography, the teacher gathered his students for a class picture. The school building was just to the left of this space. Visiting this school gave me pause and helped me understand even more so how fortunate we are. I admired this teacher very much and hope that he continues to teach.
This is a silver gelatin print of a young student made by me, the photographer, in my darkroom. It is printed on Ilford MGIVWT glossy fiber 11x14 paper, and toned in selenium for permanence. It is processed in a Zone VI washer to archival standards, and allowed to dry overnight on a screen. The camera/lens combination was a Hasselblad 501CM/100mm, and the frame was exposed onto Kodak's fabulous Tri-X film. This portrait is from a library of well over 300,000 negatives exposed over the last 24 years, from four continents and a dozen countries. Every person is spoken with prior to the portrait, and the process is explained fully. Most of my work is on film, and the countries are revisited year after year in order to continue the documentation of the same families, of the same communities.
This young girl attends a religious school six days a week, and endures a most conservative society day to day. We have worked with her school for the past eight years and hope to support her headmaster with his vision to bring a more rounded curriculum to his school. Their headmaster is a wonderful man and hopes to expand the curriculum past the existing one based on religion only. Her village is quite a ways from the main road, tiny and incredibly serene. This is the only world she knows.
The purpose of selling these portraits on Etsy is to support the social work being accomplished through my photography. Presently we have six sewing centers in two states of India, serving both the Hindu and the Muslim communities. In these sewing centers, young women learn a trade while also making clothing for their families. The centers are located in the rural areas, where young women have only one option normally, marriage and a family. At this moment, due to COVID-19, the work is on hold. However, we plan to restart the centers in 2022 and the funds from the sale of these portraits will be applied to the work in India.
As a side note, my belief is that you will be very pleased with the print in person, as the tones of a silver gelatin print are difficult to represent through the screen. One may sense the surface of the print by looking at the gloss in certain areas of the print's surface. In the end, the print you will receive will be slightly different than the one represented on the screen, both in tone and in emotional impact... different in the best sense of the word. Every print is an original, and my hope is that it finds a good space in your home.
Each print will be signed and dated by me, the photographer, and numbered to a maximum of 50 prints (11x14) per negative.
