Theodore Kaye: Theyyam Dancers

Photo © Theodore Kaye-All Rights Reserved

Theodore Kaye grew up in China, India and Indonesia. While majoring in Film, he studied also Uzbek and Farsi and worked as a newspaper editor and mountain guide in Central Asia.

Subsequently he was a staff photographer at Rhythms Monthly, a Chinese-language geographic magazine, and covered stories in India, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Taiwan, Japan, Ireland and Great Britain. His work has been featured by the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Asahi Shimbun and the National Film Board of Canada.

I was particularly attracted to his Theyyam Dancers of North Kerala for the vibrancy of his photographs. Interestingly, it seems that Theodore was guided to these performances by a contact who lives in Dubai, and organized his Keralite relatives and neighbors to provide him with all the support he needed to document these dances.

Theyyam is a unique ritual which is performed only in Northern Kerala. After a complex preparatory ritual involving elaborate make-up and meditation, the performers are incarnated as deities, and dispense advice and counseling to the throngs of devotees who attend these rituals. It's a living cult of several thousand-year-old traditions, rituals and customs, and is observed by all the castes and classes in this region.

My own gallery of Theyyam Incarnate Deities is here.

The Travel Photographer's Channel on Vimeo

I've converted a number of my audio slideshows to mp4 movies, which are also iPad-compatible, and grouped them in a Vimeo channel. The channel is (obviously) called The Travel Photographer Channel....so this is a heads-up for TTP's readers to drop by and comment or "like" or whatever.

I prefer Vimeo to YouTube...I think its quality is better, and it seems to be more "serious" in its inventory of movies.

Angkor Photo Festival 2010

The 2010 Angkor Photo Festival is to be held between November 20 to November 27 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The event is a unique photo festival in South East Asia,  and it's now in its 6th iteration, having had its inaugural gathering in 2005.

In 2010, 110 photographers including 50 Asian photographers are showcasing their work, in keeping with festival’s mission of highlighting emerging Southeast Asian photographers. These works are curated by  well-known figures in photography, Yumi Goto, Antoine d’Agata, and Françoise Callier .

This promises to be a real cornucopia of established and emerging photographic talent, with the participation of Olivia Arthur, Munem Wasif, Paolo Pellegrin, Shiho Fukada, Sohrab Hura, Rony Zakaria, Palani Mohan, Agnes Dherbeys and John Stanmeyer, amongst many others.

To keep up with developments, you can also drop by Angkor Photo Festival's Facebook Page