India Photographs

The photographs exhibited below were taken in March 1998. They were taken in Bombay, New Delhi, Agra, and at the Chakki Bank train station outside of Pathankhot. Included in the Bombay photographs are pictures I took during the Holi festival. Holi is a spring festival which is also referred to as Full Moon Day of Phaalguna. It is a festival of "mirth and merriment" with a great deal of dancing and drinking -- the latter includes alcohol and cannibas. If you choose to play Holi you are met with showers of colored powder called gulal. As you see below my son Joel, who was 17 at the time, decided to play. Possibly the most powerful photographs I took in India were at the Chakki Bank train station. After a calm and very sweet spirited week in Dharamsala where I attended His Holiness the Dalai Lamas public teachings, visited with people from all over the world, and photographed the children at the Tibetan Childrens Village, I made the treacherous drive to the Chakki Bank train station just outside of Pathankot at the foothills of the Himalayas. As I entered the station I encountered a group of  people from the Indian Punjab. I took out a camera but before I could ask them if I could take their picture I viewed fear and horror in their faces. I have always tried to ask permission before I take a persons photograph (I did this even before I read Robert Coles introduction to Dorothea Lange’s photographs) but these people’s reaction made asking permission a mute issue. I started to put my camera away. At that point a soldier who was at the station with his own children began speaking with the people and then told me that they would like me to take their photographs. Two of those photographs are included below.

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