RMA: Nagas, Hidden Hill Tribes

The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City's Chelsea area has just announced a new photographic exhibit: Nagas: Hidden Hill People of India by Pablo Bartholomew running from March 13 to September 21, 2009.

The accompanying blurb reads:

Residing in the low Himalayan hills of northeastern India and Myanmar (Burma), the Nagas are a people faced with both tradition and transition. This very diverse community is divided into a number of tribes and sub-tribes and speaks as many as 30 different languages. In Nagas: Hidden Hill People of India photographer Pablo Bartholomew offers a visual anthropology of these historical headhunters, particularly the preservation of their traditional culture and their interaction with and adoption of Western religion and influence.

This is certainly an event I won't miss. Nagaland and the so-called Seven Sisters in north east India is one of the last remaining area of the subcontinent that I haven't visited.

I will report on the exhibition soon.

Holi: The Festival of Colors

Photo ©REUTERS/K.K. Arora-All Rights Reserved
I've been waiting for the Boston Globe's The Big Picture to feature its choices of large format images of Holi, and I didn't have to wait long.

Holi, which usually falls in the later part of February or March, is a traditional festival celebrated in India and elsewhere such as Nepal and Bangladesh. The main day is observed by people throwing colored powder and colored water at each other, and bonfires are lit the day before to commemorate a religious event.

In the above photograph, women tear off the clothes of men as they play huranga in Dauji temple near the northern Indian town of Mathura during this year's Holi festivities. Huranga is a game played between men and women a day after the Holi festival during which men drench women with liquid colors and women tear off the clothes of the men.

It does look like fun, doesn't it? Potentially damaging to one's camera gear, but certainly fun.

Robert van Koesveld: Thaipusam in Penang

Photo ©Robert van Koesveld.-All Rights Reserved
Robert van Koesveld's biography tells us he has set aside “at least the next 2 years” from his career as a psychotherapist to focus on his crafts of photography, making and traveling.

Considering himself an image-maker rather than a picture-taker, Robert has worked with alternative processes and darkroom printmaking and considers that the digital ‘lightroom’ is an extension of that practice. He returned to photography about ten years ago, and has always been an enthusiastic traveler, traveling with his wife to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, India, Malaysia and Bhutan. They also travelled to Mali for the Festival au Desert in Timbuktu and explored the Silk Road in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kashgar. They are returning to Bhutan soon where they will travel the West-East traverse to deepen their connection to this country. Together, they are working on photographic essays and articles arising from their shared travels.

Robert's submission to The Travel Photographer blog is a well put together SoundSlides of Thaipusam, with many "in your face" imagery and accompanying soundtrack. Some 800,000 Hindu Tamil and Chinese devotees of Muruga (also called Subramaniam), the Hindu God of War, gathered in Penang (Malaysia) to celebrate Thaipusam, where Robert was at the time.

Apart from his travel website, Robert maintains a fine art photography website well worth one's while to browse around.