Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Shooting Mystical India .. Dam Madar Malangs of India


As a peoples photographer right from the earliest years I decided to shoot diverse ethnicity ,,not for money gain or profit just for my own personal curiosity and satisfaction,,
So I began documenting the lifestyle of the Rifai body piercing order , I followed them from Shrine to Shrine..I endeared myself to the Rifai adherents .. and as mentioned earlier I met the Malangs at Ajmer and thus began my tryst with this unique Sufi order with old traditions and Sufi heritage ..
In Mumbai too I shot the whippers of Ma Ambe , who beat their bodies and beg .. I shot the transgender hijras over 20000 images disabled from public view .
I began shooting Muslim beggars ...the Tamil devotees of Goddess Marriammen in Mumbai shooting their cheek piercings , hooks on their backs as they pulled cars trucks on the Mumbai streets .
I shot diverse Faith ..and surely I decided to shoot the Naga Sadhus and the Kumbh and Maha Kumbh Mela .
The Malangs was untapped source of my pictorial curiosity ,,so I became Malang to shoot it more closely.. as I love shooting faces I found the Malang faces unique ,, and though my images are shot a long way back I am adding text on my tweaked images and updating it newly ,..
I mean I knew I cant shoot newspaper shit ,..I cant shoot a travel blog , I cant shoot landscape or still life so I decided to shoot India as I see it cosmically and poetically ,, I honed my photography shooting garbage and urban chaos 

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