Asia Society: Princes And Painters In Muhgal India

The Asia Society Museum in New York City is to show Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, an exhibition showcasing Delhi's rich rich history of art, artists and patrons who flourished during this critical period.

The exhibition will focus on the reigns of the last four Mughal emperors  Muhammad Shah, Shah Alam II, Akbar Shah II and Bahadur Shah II Zafar. The latter emperor is the subject of William Dalrymple "The Last Mughal"...a captivating biography of Bahadur Shah Zafar, a descendant of both Genghis Khan and Timur the Great, and of the city of Delhi around the time of the Sepoy Rebellion.

The Sepoy Rebellion was eventually put down with great brutality by the British in a series of bloody battles, and Old Delhi was virtually ransacked. For those of us who know it, the Red Fort and the Jami Masjid were within a hair's breath of being razed, but were saved through the intercession of a high ranking British military commander. Imagine Old Delhi without these two architectural and historical gems?!

Bahadur Shah Zafar was sent into exile in Burma, where he died. He was banished not so much for what he did during the Rebellion, but because the Victorian Evangelicals were determined to replace his influence with that of Christianity. Zafar, having a Hindu mother, and an observant Muslim, appealed to India's major two religions and that couldn't be tolerated.

Researching the subject for this post, I read in a 2009 issue of the Telegraph that efforts were made to trace Zafar's descendants. It seems many have fled to Kolkata and Aurangabad, while others live in Burma and Pakistan.

Note to Publishers and Agents: I do not feature book reviews unless I read and like the books I write about or mention. So do not waste your time emailing me to publicize your book(s) on this blog. I will not.

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Sandy Chandler: Videos & Book...Kolkata & Durga Puja

Sandy Chandler has been busy the past few months. No, make that real busy.

She participated in my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo~Expedition & Workshop in October, and having produced a highly commendable black & white audio-slideshow (at top) during the workshop, also returned home with a trove of images and audio tracks recorded live during the two weeks in Kolkata.

Back home, she produced a more light hearted view of the festival which views it from what she calls "Another Side of Durga Puja", and features its mixture of spirituality and commerce.

As she describes it, "the annual Durga Puja festival in Kolkata celebrates Durga, archetype of Great Goddess Mahadevi of the Hindu Pantheon. The festival sees huge, elaborately crafted sculptures installed in homes and public spaces all over the city. At the end of the festival, the idols are paraded through the streets accompanied by music and dancing and then immersed into the Ganges river."

Sandy is currently working towards her MA in Art & Religion at the Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology (Graduate Theology Union) in Berkeley, and these slideshows are part of her projects for this degree.

Others would be resting on their laurels, but she also self-published an 80 pages book titled Durga Puja which can be bought from Blurb.

Sandy Chandler is an award-winning and passionate travel photographer. Her photography captures the souls and spirit of the land, its culture and people.  Her previous photography books are Carnevale: The Fantasy of Venice and Calling the Soul:The Spirit of Bali Cremations.

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NPR: Tibet 100 Years Ago

Photo Courtesy Bonhams

NPR's The Picture Show recently reported that a part of Tibet's history recorded through old photographs was auctioned in London. The photographs (consisting of 70 platinum prints and 2 folding panoramas) were taken by British political officer John Claude White during a 1903 British mission to Tibet, and were sold for 38,400 (or about $60,000).

I love news like that because it fuses history (military), Asia, adventurism and photography. John Claude White was part of the British expedition led by Francis Younghusband who, under orders from George Curzon, was to settle disputes over the Sikkim-Tibet border. In reality, the expedition was to establish British hegemony in Tibet, and morphed into an invasion and occupation of Tibet. This was one of the many chess pieces in The Great Game between Great Britain and Russia to control Central Asia.

Younghusband is subject of a well-documented biography by Patrick French, titled The Last Imperial Adventurer. A fascinating man (comparable in my view to Sir Richard Francis Burton...another incredible adventurer), Younghusband is said to have experienced revelatory visions in the mountains of Tibet, toyed with telepathy in Kashmir, and eventually espoused a sort of atheism, even though he was brought up as an Evangelical Christian.

I always think photojournalists (especially those who work in Iraq and Afghanistan) to read up on history instead of believing the crap we see on television...they'll have a better grasp of what's still going on. The Last Imperial Adventurer is one of those books.

I know...I may be wasting my breath.

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John Stanmeyer: Bali Island of Spirits

Excerpted from VII's press release announcing John Stanmeyer's new book Bali: Island of Spirits:

Spirits are everywhere in Bali. Balinese spiritual culture has its roots in Indian Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient animist beliefs, first originating in East Java. Centuries-old ceremonies with deeply layered rituals are very much alive today. John Stanmeyer spent five years living in Bali, creating this reportage through the uninhibited and timeless lens of a Holga. His photographs capture practices from decades past, transcending the temporal as they live on today and into the unforeseen future.

Details on the reception and book signing:

Artist reception and book signing will be held September 16, 2010, 6 - 8:30pm at the VII Gallery located in Brooklyn at 28 Jay St. (F-York St), and open Mon-Fri from 10am to 6pm.

A PDF version of the book's description and details of the reception is here.

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Book Event: 100 New York Photographers

The 100 New York Photographer book, in which my biography and four of my travel photographs of Ethiopia, Bhutan, and Burma are prominently featured, will be the subject of a book signing event at Rizzoli Bookstore at 57th Street in New York City on January 22, 2010.

The book's author Cynthia Maris Dantzic and special guests (presumably some of the photographers in the book) will be at the event. Unfortunately, I will be in India at that time, so I had to convey my regrets to the publishers.

The book groups the work of 100 New York celebrated photographers to include Vincent Laforet, Jay Maisel, Mary Ellen Mark, Joel Meyerowitz, Annie Leibowitz, Jenny Jozwiak and Pete Turner.

If you are in New York City and have the time, I'm certain that it'll be a worthwhile event. Click the above picture for a larger version.

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Book: Dalrymple's Nine Lives

One of my favorite haunts when I'm in London is Stanfords, the travel bookstore close to Covent Gardens...and one of my favorite authors is William Dalrymple. So when both come together in an event to be held at the Royal Geographical Society, I am ready with my credit card to buy a ticket.

However, as I will still be in Bhutan on October 7, I will miss the event, but look forward to buying the book when I am in London.

I posted about Nine Lives earlier on TTP.

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Private: The Other Side of India

PRIVATE is a self-described quarterly international review of black and white photographs and texts, and an "independent and itinerant publication that offer its photographic journey since 1992".

Its website, Private Photo Review, is showcasing a special issue titled The Other Side of India, with black & white photographs by Indian photographers, such as Srinivas Kuruganti with Coal India Limited, Saibal Das with Circus Girls, Bijoy Chowdhury with Bandwallahs, and others.

I wish Private Photo Review could have shown us a sample of these photographs in a larger format. As they are, they're too small for us to really appreciate. For instance, it could've used Issuu to publish a sample magazine, which would enhanced its eye-candy appeal.

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Justin Guariglia: Planet Shanghai

Justin Guariglia's latest book, Planet Shanghai, is his attempt to preserve the city's unique culture, traditions and its people. The ICP will be having a book signing event with Justin Guariglia on Friday, May 23 (6:00 pm - 7:30 pm) at its store on 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, NYC.

Here are some samples from Planet Shanghai

From the New Yorker magazine:

It�s amazing how much you can accomplish in Shanghai while wearing pajamas. In recent years, Shanghai newspapers have worried that this sartorial habit will give the city a slovenly image, but it seems that many natives see little divide between public and private space. Justin Guariglia, an American photographer who lived in Asia for nearly a decade, captures the city in its most informal moments. His book includes dozens of portraits of pajama�d Shanghainese: visiting the supermarket, riding motorcycles, walking dogs, playing mah-jongg, going to McDonald�s, smoking cigarettes. Guariglia works close to the ground; he shoots the undersides of bridges and the sheen of vegetables at the market, and includes no fewer than sixteen pages of footwear, a common Chinese obsession. His search for street style uncovers moments of unexpected beauty: a rainbow pile of scrap wire, a heart-shaped decoration on an anti-theft gate, a boarded-up door crisscrossed with lines as straight and true as a calligrapher�s best brushwork.

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Douglas Menuez: The Orphans of Uganda

Douglas Menuez began his career photographing for the Washington Post, then moved to Time, Newsweek, Life, People and Fortune Magazine and many other publications worldwide over the past twenty years.

He�s covered major news stories including the famine in Ethiopia, the destruction of the Amazon, the AIDS crisis, drug wars, presidential campaigns, the Olympics, five SuperBowls and the World Series.

Transcendent Spirit: The Orphans of Uganda follows the journey of 20 orphans who overcame tremendous hardships to form a dance troupe and become cultural ambassadors for their troubled country. They have brought their intense energy and joy to audiences across the US over the past ten years, which have resulted in their support of more than 700 orphans in Uganda. Rising from the extreme poverty and devastation wrought by AIDS and civil war in Uganda to receive standing ovations while touring the best theaters in the US, these exceptional children bring good news from Africa.

For further work from Menuez, go here.

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Jessica Dimmock: The Ninth Floor

I have to preface my review of Jessica Dimmock's powerful book, The Ninth Floor, by describing its photographs as raw, unflinching, many of which are frightening and that have dragged me into the depths of a world heroin addicts, for whom there's seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. In a way, I'm glad to have been given the chance of reviewing that book because it forced me out of my"comfort zone", both personally and photographically-speaking.

Jessica's forceful photographs document the drug-addled lives of residents on the ninth floor of a Manhattan's flat-iron district apartment building. For almost three years, she follows these drug addicts in their day-to-day activities, managing to become invisible in the process. While she gained access to the ninth floor residents through the help of a cocaine dealer, how she managed to gain the trust of her subjects is a tribute not only to her photography abilities, but also to her interpersonal skills. It appears that her subjects forgot about her presence, and she effectively became invisible while documenting their vortex of self destruction.

Deservedly, her work is receiving a copious amount of media attention before and following the publishing of The Ninth Floor.

This is documentary photography which, in my opinion, is best described as voyeuristic. Photographs of the apartment dwellers injecting the drugs, sleeping, arguing and fighting, having intercourse, being beaten up by their partners, hospitalized, and begging in the streets are all gripping and repellent at the same time. The self destruction of these people (I almost described them as unfortunate, but I can't) is palpable through Jessica's lens.

As many have said before, I wonder who is the audience for this book. Some in my immediate circle found the photographs to be disturbing and weren't able to go through the whole book, others have found it to be a gripping documentation of hopelessly wasted lives, and others have even suggested that it ought to be mandatory reading for college students.

The book is published by Contrasto, and is very well designed. Its many gatefold pages come almost as a surprise and probably have the best photographs in the book.

There's no question that we will be seeing more of Jessica Dimmock's work in the near future.

MediaStorm has just published a multimedia feature of The Ninth Floor

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Unsung: Extraordinary People

Image Copyright © Mahesh Bhat-All Rights Reserved
Since TTP is a non-commercial blog, I do not post about books unless I've read and enjoy them, however this is an exception.

UNSUNG is an inspirational book about Indians with ordinary backgrounds who have made extraordinary contributions to their communities. The book tells the stories of nine of such people from places across India, such as Ladkah, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Orissa.

It seems that the book was about 5 years in the making, and published despite many odds. It features B&W photographs by photographer Mahesh Bhat and text by journalist Anita Pratap, who have self-published the book.

I thought the best story was that of Tulasi Munda, an adivasi from Orissa, who started a school under a tree, selling puffed rice to finance it. The school has educated more than 15,000 so far. I've photographed the adivasis in Chhattisgarh, and I'm aware of the difficulties they face...so to read about Tulasi Munda's achievements is encouraging.

Both Mahesh and Anita deserve praise and admiration for their determination, and for bringing these extraordinary "ordinary" people to our awareness.

Unsung

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WIP

Image & Design © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Watch this space....

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Geographic Expeditions: Simon Winchester

An invitation from Bridget Lackie of Geographic Expeditions landed in my email inbox a few weeks ago, announcing a literary event at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center, in which the incomparable Simon Winchester would talk about his upcoming book on China.

The event was held on the evening of Wednesday Sept 26th, and was extremely well attended by invitees who -to my mind at least- seemed to fit a certain profile: globetrotting travelers, Sinophiles and avid travel book readers. The talk was preceded by cocktails where everyone mingled and shared travel stories.

As background: Simon Winchester is a best-selling British author, and a journalist who spent a twenty-year career as a foreign correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, and who has written for Cond� Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic and book reviews for The New York Times. He occasionally lends his voice to the New York Times multimedia slideshows.

Interviewed by Don George, (Editor of Geographic Expeditions' Recce Literary Journeys for the Discerning Traveler ), the talk lasted an hour and was so enjoyable that it felt like a few moments. Both are pros at this sort of thing, and they immediately drew us into an intimate armchair conversation between two old friends.

While the conversation touched on Simon Winchester's experiences in China, it was mostly about his forthcoming biography about the British biochemist and Chinese science scholar Joseph Needham. Needham's exhaustive writings on China examined why it had been overshot by the West in science and technology, despite its earlier successes.

An exteremely enjoyable and enlightning evening, made so by an experienced storyteller and his interviewer who captivated their audience. Interestingly, Simon's forthcoming book on Joseph Needham is still title-less...and he asked the audience to suggest one to him, provided it didn't contain the words 'barbarian' or 'dragon'!

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