Kumbh Mela: An Indian Odyssey

From The Sadhus of the Kumbh Mela-Copyright 2001 Tewfic El-Sawy
I've posted photographs and galleries from the Kumbh Mela on TTP a few times already, but it's such an outstanding venue that I decided to add another. A new multimedia feature from Time magazine is of the Kumbh Mela, which took place in Allahabad over the past two months. The photographs are black & white, which is a welcome departure from the rest of the images I've seen of this spectacular 'not-to-be-missed' religious event. The photographer is Prashant Panjiar, who has done a great job capturing the atmosphere of the Kumbh. I noticed that nothing changed since I attended this phenomenal gathering of humanity in 2001.

Prashant also narrates the piece very well, which adds a welcome dimension to his work. On the negative side, I personally didn't care much for Rohan Panjar's music that accompanies the feature. The title of the feature chosen by Time is corny, and they should've done better. However, Prashant's photographs are superb and he obviously had excellent access to wherever he chose to photograph.

I've illustrated this post with one of my own photographs of the naked sadhus, or nagas. For those who are interested, I refer you to G.S. Ghurye’s comprehensive book, Indian Sadhus, in which the naked nagas are described as remnants of private armies that temple establishments maintained in India for centuries for protection and privacy. Naked warriors bore arms, were trained in the art of warfare and cleared the way for pandits and mandaleswars during their travels. India’s nude ascetic warriors were supposed to gain their strength and ability for battle from their of life and their long penance in the mountains. With the coming of the British, the naked ascetics warriors were outlawed and became marginalised freaks. But until today, most akharas (sadhus' ashrams) have a lance (or a trident?) planted in the ground in front of their gates that remind passerbys of their warlike ancestry.

An Indian Odyssey

Sigma DP1

I'm on the lookout for a small backup camera, which must also be well suited for street photography. So I was interested in the Sigma announcement (in time for the PMA) of the new DP1 high end point and shoot digital camera equipped with 14 megapixel (2652x1768x3 layers) large size direct image Foveon sensor (APS-C). Its press release says that the DP1's silicon embedded layers of photo sensors take advantage of silicon’s ability to absorb red, green and blue light at different respective depths. This camera incorporates both RAW and JPEG image recording formats "enabling photographers to capture the highest possible picture definition and smaller file sizes."

It certainly sounds interesting, however the DP1 comes with a fixed f 4.0 28mm lens. Two problems right there: for this camera to be truly a running success, it needs a wider aperture...2.8 would be useful, and 2.0 would be wonderful. I expect that a wider aperture lens would have made it heavier and bulkier, but hope springs eternal. I don't mind the lens being fixed, but it would've been so much better if its lens was a 20mm or 24mm instead. These issues were raised to Sigma, and the answers can be found on the link. I will wait for the hands-on tech reviews, but I'm hopeful that the hands-on results of this camera will trump the theoretical expectations.

No word about the price yet...nor when the DP1 will be available.

Sigma DP1

Audio: New Zoom H2 Digital Recorder

The Japanese Samson company has just announced the Zoom H2 digital audio recorder, which follows its successful Zoom H4. Few details are available at this time, but it's assumed that it is SD based. The price is estimated at $199.

More details at Photoethnography

Olivia Arthur: The Ramnamis

Image Copyright Olivia Arthur
After a degree in Mathematics from Oxford and a diploma in photojournalism from the London College of Printing, Olivia worked in India for two years, freelancing for British publications, including The Observer Magazine, The Independent Magazine, and The Telegraph Magazine.

I was very interested in her brilliant gallery In The Name of God, which documents the Ramnamis in central India. These are members of the untouchable caste, who are prohibited from entering any temple with any Hindu. They tattoo the name of God (Ram) on their faces and/or bodies to announce that they have God with them at all times. This angers the upper caste who see this as polluting Ram's name with their 'untouchable' bodies.

I contacted Olivia for more information about the Ramnamis, and she was gracious to give me some guidance.

Olivia Arthur's In The Name of God

PhotoShelter Storage

PhotoShelter announced that photographers could access 1 terrabyte of redundant storage for an annual fee of $1000, or 1/2 a terrabyte for $600 a year. I don't think that's a bad deal at all...since it currently costs more than that to just buy the drives, and have them in safe locations. I wonder if the annual fee will change, remain the same or drop. It ought to be the latter since the cost of manufacturing storage has been declining over the years.

PhotoShelter warns that the average lifespan of a hard drive is 4 years, and that storing images on computer's hard drive or on DVD/CD's is an extremely risky proposition. (!!!)

PhotoShelter's Press Release

Darfur: Travis Fox/Washington Post

Image Copyright Travis Fox/Washington Post
The Washington Post has a brilliantly-produced multimedia piece on Darfur by Travis Fox.

The government of Sudan is accused of arming and supporting the Janjaweed, an Arab militia in Darfur, who are accused of being guilty of brutal attacks on civilians. More than 450,000 people have been killed by violence and disease. Millions more have been forced off their land in what the US government calls genocide. Recently, attacks have spread to eastern Chad, where the ethnic make up is the same and the border porous.

I find that the panoramics in the piece were extremely well chosen, and give the viewers/readers the sense of actually being there. The more I see panos of that kind, the more I think that they will become an integral part of future photojournalism productions, since they impart such a sense of effective immediacy in the storytelling. Certainly, travel photographers would be well advised to learn the technique as well.

I also watched the movie, and it's as effective as anything I've seen on this on television. Watch the emotional recounting of the unfortunate woman who was raped by the Janjaweed. I could understand enough of what was said that I can confirm that the translation in the subtitles is accurate.

The Washington Post multimedia features are really terrific, and are probably among the best on the web.

Crisis In Darfur Expands

Antonio Mari : The Yanomami of Brazil

Image Copyright Antonio Mari
Antonio Mari is a Brazilian journalist and photographer based in New York City, specializing in ethnographic subject matter--documenting peoples and cultures outside the mainstream of western civilization.

He has completed documentaries on the vanishing folklore festivals in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, the historic architecture of Brazil's colonial towns and the Amish community of Sugarcreek in Holmes County, Ohio. He has also spent almost a decade documenting the fragile existence of the Yanomami Indians in the Brazilian Amazon rain forest. His reportage on the subject has been widely published throughout the world, including multipage spreads in Newsweek , TIME Magazine, Science Magazine and the Boston Globe.

Naturally, I chose his work with the Yanomami to feature on TTP. The Yanomami generally refers to the indigenous tribespeople who live in an area that spans parts of the northwest Amazon Rainforest and southern Orinoco,

Antonio's website is Flash-based, as most photography websites are these days, and you need to choose his gallery The Yanomami: Children of Eden. It's an automatic slideshow of 27 photographs, and captions are available when clicking on the little arrow at the bottom.

Antonio Mari

David Alan Harvey: Havana

Image Copyright David Alan Harvey/Magnum
David Alan Harvey is a legend among photojournalists. Here's what Dirck Halstead, of the Digital Journalist says about him: "David is a photojournalist's photojournalist. His work is in the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and W. Eugene Smith. He never uses a press card or long lens. He never stands behind ropes at a "photo op." He tends to use a single Leica body with either a 35mm or 50mm lens. He has the eye of painter and the soul of a poet. He is the kind of photographer I would like to be."

For the past 15 years, David has assembled an incredible body of work on Hispanic culture. Sponsored by his agency, Magnum Photos, and National Geographic, he has documented the Mayan culture, the trail of the conquistadors, Chile, Honduras, Belize and Spain. He developed a love affair with Cuba. In his words, it was "a love mixed with frustration, fear, passion, and paranoia...I was drawn to the ballet of street photography. I hung out with Cubans, listened to their music, drank with them, danced and ate with them. I visited schools and science labs. I rode buses, lived with the families, went to church, and in general, soaked it all up. I lived it, felt it, and photographed it."

His images are full of life and vivacity...and the gallery has Real Audio snippets with David's commentary. By the way, his 17th image on the gallery is of Adelaide and Wilki...these two photogenic Cubans were fixtures in Old Havana, dancing exuberantly for tourists and photographers. I met them in Havana in 2000 and have photographs of them...one of which is on my Havana gallery (a gallery which is in dire need of being reworked on).

David Alan Harvey's gallery on Cuba, and above excerpts come courtesy of the Digital Journalist. It's been a while that this gallery has been published...and it shows. I would freshen it up by converting it into a Flash slideshow, perhaps adding a pulsating Ibrahim Ferrer track to the Havana images, and traditional son with the rest. Along with David's narrative, it'd be wonderful. Notwithstanding, the images are timeless.

David Alan Harvey's Cuban Soul

I haven't met David, but through his recently published blog, I can tell that he's indeed one of a kind. His desire to help young emerging photographers and his generosity stand out in an industry that is frequently selfish and egoistical. My hat's off to David Alan Harvey.

David Alan Harvey's Blog

The NGS Cell Phone

The National Geographic Society will attempt market its new Talk Abroad™ Travel Phone this month. The unlocked Quad band GSM cell phone is said to be reliable and affordable. Calls can be made in over 100 countries around the world (including the US and Canada) while maintaining one personal cellular number. Since this is a prepaid solution, there are no contracts to sign or monthly bills.

I am no expert of cellular telephony, but I comfortably predict this phone will provide no competition to the Blackberries, Nokias and iPhones, in spite of the NGS logo.

Talk Abroad Travel Phone

Katherine Kiviat: Parwana

Image Copyright Katherine Kiviat
Katherine Kiviat has been working as an international documentary photographer and photojournalist for the past 7 years. International assignments have taken her to Afghanistan, India, Israel, Oman, Europe, and the United States. 

For the last two years she was based in Kabul where she photographed the first democratic elections and focused on Afghan women and their changing role in Afghanistan. In June 2005, she published "Parwana" with journalist Scott Heidler. The book is a collection of portraits and interviews of Afghan women across the country who are agents of change.

Presently based in Jerusalem, she has photographed a number of Palestinian-Israeli co-existence programs around the region as well as covering feature stories outside Gaza and the West Bank.

Her website has a number of galleries to choose from, but I suggest you visit her solid work on Afghan women, which she titled "Parwana". I hope her book does very well.

Her photographs can be seen here

India: Holi Festival Redux

Further to my earlier post a few days ago, the Washington Post just published a gallery of photographs of the Indian festival of Holi, which was celebrated on March 3.

Here's the link: Holi

POV: Cult of the Famous

If this doesn't enhance my reputation as opinionated, I don't know what will. A recent ad/post on a photo forum attracted my attention. It involved a request for photography assistants to help out a photographer over short duration gigs. The ad was written in such a way as to impart that the assisting opportunities were exciting since the photographer is famous. The cities in question are domestic and international. The duration of the gigs is between 2-3 days each.

Here's the ad/post:

"Digital assistants good day rate plus expenses!!!!!

Requirements: 1.They need to own a laptop 2. Need to know how to use digital cameras inside & out; download raw and jpg, burn DVD’s 3. They need to own or be able to drive a car and know each city well 4. They need to pick up/drop off photographer from airport/hotel depending upon cities."

Let's examine the job requirements: knowledgeable in computers and presumably photo-editing, ownership of a mac laptop, profound knowledgeable of digital cameras, ownership of a car to drive the photographer around, and shuttling to and from the airport with waiting time, etc. In other words, what's needed is a photographer's assistant, a fixer, an interpreter, a guide, a driver and -if necessary- a 'pinata' if anything goes wrong.

Then let's tally costs of a driver, car, translator/interpreter, guide, digital photography expert, etc and see if the photographer's "good day rate" is remotely comparable. I'm willing to bet the ranch that it will be a fraction of that. Yes, I know, all this is speculation and that the photographer may prove me wrong by paying the assistant a decent wage, mileage, gas, food, etc. along with some mentoring perhaps...I hope so. By the way, the US industry standard is about $150-200 a day for 10 hours work by an assistant with some experience.

But as I see it, the intangible benefits to the assistants over these 2-3 days are negligible...it's too tight a time frame. Working with a photographer in such gigs cannot provide a learning experience someone would get from say a month's internship, or even a week, where they'd be exposed to many facets of the photographer's business.

I wouldn't feel exercised about this if the ad/post hadn't been written to convey it as an opportunity to work for a famous photographer and gain attendant benefits. It subsequently was clarified by the ad poster that job seekers should not expect anything more than a day's wages from the experience. So why headline the post/ad with the name of this famous photographer? We all know the answer to that.

Some in the professional industry agreed with me, while others didn't and said so in the strongest of terms. Hackles were raised by my using the word 'exploitative' and it was claimed that there was nothing wrong for assistants to do the legwork and the heavy lifting for photographers. Maybe in an industry as competitive as photography, a job that pays any kind of wage is welcome.

A rather theatrically petulant post from a photographer on the forum, who describes himself rather bizzarely on his profile webpage as a 'feral photographer' (yes, i know what you're thinking...not much going on in this guy's attic) claimed that my questioning the ad's requirements would lead to assignments being no longer posted on the forum, and implying that I was snatching bread from the mouth of his dependents.

A number of posters knocked themselves out in clamoring that they would work for free to assist a famous photographer. These are the same people who are hysterical and up in arms when an amateur photographer's work is shown for free on Yahoo or CNN or any other website. Sublime hypocrisy or just stupidity? Is it because there isn't enough work of that kind to go around? Or is it just a puerile reaction to accept scraps from the famous and powerful? Is it just being enthralled by celebrity photographers, hoping that their success will rub onto them during a 2-3 days period? Is it to ingratiate themselves to the ad poster?

Once again, I am not disputing the value of assisting any photographer for a period of time...nor disputing the value of internships...not at all. What I'm disputing is the intrinsic (if the wage is based on industry standard, so be it) value of these very short term gofer gigs, and the obvious attempt by the ad poster to make it sound better than it is, capitalizing on the photographer's fame.

Beyond The Frame: Whipping of the Hamar

Whipping of the Hamar - Image Copyright Tewfic El-Sawy
One of the most interesting tribes of the Omo Valley of south western Ethiopia are the Hamar, who have unique rituals such as a cattle-leaping ceremony that men go through in order to reach adulthood, during which young Hamar women get whipped to prove their love for their kinsmen.

Not far from Turmi, I attended the jumping of the bulls ceremony, which was preceded by a couple of hours during which the Hamar women are whipped by the men of their tribal families. This was unlike any ritual I had ever seen. I still cringe at the memory of the whipping, at the sound of the switches landing on bare flesh and at seeing the wounds and bloody welts on the backs of Hamar young women. I've photographed open heart surgeries in Vietnam's hospitals, so I don't shy from seeing wounds and such, but the whipping of the Hamar women disturbed me a great deal. I accept that it's their culture, but I really wish this custom would change.

I have some images that are quite graphic, but I've chosen for this week's BTF an image showing a Hamar woman insisting in being whipped, shoving a switch into the reluctant hands of the young tribesman.

According to custom, the Hamar man comes of age by leaping over a line of cattle. It’s the ceremony which qualifies him to marry, own cattle and have children. The timing of the ceremony is up to the man’s parents and happens after harvest. On the afternoon of the leap, the man’s female relatives demand to be whipped as part of the ceremony. The whipping was done when the women jump up to a few chosen men, marked by feathers behind either ear. They handed the men a green thin stick (a switch) and while continuing to jump, the men would whip them, drawing blood. As the blows reined, the girls, without flinching, would bow their heads and jump away only to return in a matter of moments with another green stick, to repeat the whole procedure. The whipping seems to be totally consensual; the girls gather round and beg to be whipped on their backs. They don’t show the pain and claim they’re proud of the scars. One effect of this ritual whipping is to create a strong debt between the young man about to be married and his sisters. If they face hard times in the future, he’ll remember them because of the pain they went through at his initiation.

EXIF: shutter speed 1/180 sec.- fstop 6.7 - iso 100 - focal length 30mm - no flash fired.