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.
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.'
Here is a portrait of another recipient of a micro-loan sponsored by Humana People to People India almost 8 years ago. At that time I was collaborating with this great team and helped to document this project in Virat Nagar, Rajasthan. This is one of my favorite places in India, since it also was the site of 16 beautiful schools for girls.
As an extension of the development programs in the region, micro-finance provided access to loans for certain portions of the population without such. This wonderful mother decided to use her funds to purchase this machine, and was able to feed her animals more efficiently. This in turn enabled her to purchase more animals, and have more milk for her family as well as for the market.
Seeing real change as it happens is a marvel, and I cannot thank Humana People to People India enough for such an education!
These images are over 8 years old and from my time of innocence in this wonderful land. At that time I was following those around me and documenting the great work being done by Humana People to People India. They had asked me to photograph a micro-finance project in the Virat Nagar area of Rajasthan.
This was one of my favorite spots for many reasons, one of which was a group of girls schools in the villages. At the time there were 16 schools for girls, and Humana was doing its best to transition out-of-school girls smoothly back into school. In these same villages there were examples of women who had taken on small loans in order to help their families.
In this case, this young mother had used the small loan to purchase this animal... and had used the proceeds from her new endeavor to purchase the gold in her hands. She told us that she would accumulate more in order to pass it onto her daughter when he daughter gets married in the future. We were witnessing change at the grass-roots, as it was happening right before our eyes!
Note: this frame was just scanned this evening... seen for the very first time since her portrait was made in 2016!
