Photos & Experiences

Modern Portraits

2010-12-03T00:02:00.004-05:00

Modern Warfare

2008-12-20T21:50:00.003-05:00

This is my privileged experience of a war. I’ve become a proxy figure on reconnaissance free from any risk. My experience is perfectly utopian in its’ design. Simply good vs. Bad, America vs. Evil, us vs. them--get in & get out.

My photographs are of war video games – our society’s ideal virtual landscape of conflict. This is a constructed narrative of a war broken down to its simulated moments of consequence inside the game. The images reveal just how close these constructed sources of entertainment are to becoming a representation of the inhumanity of American war.

-Neil Contractor

2008-04-28T08:40:00.006-04:00

Tiger Tourism

2008-04-19T04:06:00.002-04:00

2 Weeks In; Kushalgarh, Amritsar...

2008-02-13T10:36:00.005-05:00

I'm not really sure where to start. Everything I thought about India has been correct and incorrect at the same time. It truly is some of the best and worst experiences I've had. The population, poverty, staring, dirtiness, and begging have all tested my character and patience-but the architecture, landscapes, food, and overall friendliness of everyone here have more than made up for that. Walking around can really be compared to watching all the channels of TV at once. My homestay family is fantastic, and have been nothing but accommodating to me. On top of that all, their daughter is getting married! So all this week we have been preparing for the festivities, and by last night they begun. Needless to say getting up for my Hindi class at 8:30 every morning has been made especially hard this week.

But first, when we first arrived in Delhi, we were still in Orientation. And since we weren't moving directly in with our homestay families, we took a little trip down to the town of Kushalgarh in the state of Rajasthan. It is a small village town with the population of about 10,000....but the house we were staying at was literally a PALACE in the middle of this village. It's actually owned by our program director, Mary Storm (Stormji) and it was incredibly posh and yet traditionally beautiful. While we were here we got to explore the area, were "dropped off" in a village market where we were probably the first white people they have seen in person (and had to buy all sorts of things with the miniscule amount of Hindi we knew), and ate wonderfully. Here are some of the pictures I took on the way there as well as when we were there.

An overturned truck that basically had nowhere to go...

So the backdrop of this palace was this wonderful mountain range on one side, and then an 18th century abandoned fort on the other..

Here are some of the palace..

A cow in the village we saw as we were leading up to the fort to explore..

A view inside..

Some village boys joined us too!

So that weekend trip was fascinating and just a tease of the whole of India. I think it was great for us to be put into perspective at first of what the country is outside of the city we had only briefly saw. The villages, roadside, and people in the country make up the core and majority of the population of India, but it still only felt like a tease of what there is to find.

So after we came back, I didn't have a whole lot of time to be doing photography that week. We moved into the homestays, finished our orientation and began Hindi class, and at the end had a free day in which I went around to two different galleries which are part of India Photo Now, a sort of photography renaissance occurring in Delhi at the moment, so it was great to see contemporary Indian photographers in one vs. more early examples of photography form India (including a show of original Cartier-Bresson prints, some of which I've never even seen in front of me before!). Delhi is a madhouse of a city though. It's extremely crowded, and getting around seems impossible at times. I have to take rickshaws around everywhere, and have been in traffic for 20 minutes going nowhere at points. It also seems just to keep getting bigger and bigger the more we explore and realize we have no idea where we are.

So once the week ended, we had a weekend trip out of Delhi and to Amritsar in the state of Punjab. This city is home to the Sikh Golden Temple (which we visited) as well as very close to the India-Pakistan border (which we also visited to see the change of the guard ceremony). Here are the pictures of everything:

Anxious crowds before the ceremony...

I had a spot right on the street where all the action would walk right infront of me. Here is a shot of the other side, where you can see the gate and beyond that the Pakistani flags waving..

And then came the soldiers, who had to be over 6 ft tall and have the ability to kick their legs straight up to their head.

And at the end, the bus full of those crossing the border.

So later that night, we got dinner in the middle of the market in Amritsar. It was quite a trek, and we had to go down all these windy dark alleyways and we also had no idea where we were heading.

The little eating place was right next to this stand...

The next day, we visited the Golden Temple, which is the holy temple for the Sikh religion of the world. Its completely laden with gold, surrounded with a pool of water on all sides. They feed over 50,000 people for free every weekend in their communal kitchens, and everyone who works within the temple does it voluntarily. It was truly amazing to be immersed within the religion and understand their respect for all others, even if we were stared at the whole time.

So we basically had it set up so we could have the grand tour of the temple. Including going into the temple through the "express line" (bypassing the lines through the exit) as well as a behind the scenes views of the kitches where it cooks giant POTS of dahl, and chapati after chapati.

This machine makes 10,000 chapati's an hour!

A beautiful view from the museum up stairs..

So that ends my travels so far. This week is the wedding which is going to be amazing. This is my first real wedding that I've ever been to, and I hope I don't become disappointed that the rest aren't Indian weddings. But starting next week, I'm really going to explore Delhi more and more. There is so much to see and experience here. For my independent study project I will be working on in April, I have been thinking about photographing the importance and role of advertising and billboards in Indian city life. It's such a strange mix between Indian and American advertising, and it covers an incredible amount of space within a city. It's inescapable. So expect lots of images playing with that idea.

For next time though, I'll include alot of my wedding images, as well as the images I will make day to day. Until then..

First Post, Pre-Departure

2008-01-28T18:33:00.000-05:00

So I hope to use this blog as a way to show my pictures from week to week of my travels, findings, friends, families and everything between. I also hope to use this to relate some stories and adventures that I have while I'm abroad.

But first, my trip to Mexico! Mexico was the perfect trip to take before I go the whole semester away in India. It gave me the chance to interact in the middle of a culture in which I have no communication skills at all. It really helped having other photographers around, namely Adam, so that we could keep company and talk in English every now and then. I had to pay way more attention to where I would be standing or not standing in public while I was taking pictures, who to approach and not approach, who to ask for permission, and when I could actually take my camera out. Although Oaxaca is known for its tourism, especially around that time of year, I felt comfortable walking with the camera in my hand. I think India will be much different than this. Christopher James, my department head at school who has photographed in India, recommended that I keep my camera inside my jacket even while I'm not taking pictures. Its so hard for me to imagine how similar or different photographing in each country will be, and what crosses boundries in each place.

When I started in Oaxaca, it was difficult for me to take initiative and be bold with approaching people in the streets. But after talking to Stella and just going out more and more, I realized that many people either expect or know that I am photographing there. They would do this funny little triangle with their eyes sometimes, starting at my eyes then to my right hand where my camera was, then to my left arm where my tattoo is and the back up to my eyes. I definitely felt more and more comfortable as the week goes on, and I think it was about Day 6 of shooting that I was making my best pictures of the whole trip. Looking at the pictures now, and remembering my process for the whole trip, it gives me confidence to know that with time I will be able to make the pictures I love in India, even if some places will be riskier than what I'm accustomed to.

Here are my pictures from Oaxaca. I really am pleased with this work, especially after a whole semester in the fall of not shooting. My project in the fall really demanded more of a conceptual focus, as well as physical labor in the whole process, but its definitely helped my viewing of the world. Since I just focused on society's created environments, not only structurally but socially, I found myself observing how people interacted with the city as a being. It was amazing to me how different Mexicans realities and lives were, where people had to live more in need than leisure. Nowhere in the city there was open space, and the city itself was split strangely. I enjoyed and expected more of the Zocalo region, where the "fun" activities/restaurants/sights were. This was the touristy, hyper-real (if you would) part of Oaxaca. I actually didn't even take a single picture in this area of Oaxaca, its what I've seen and done already.

Everyday I would venture into more of the real Oaxaca, where the Mexicans actually lived and bought things and communed. I could find the beautiful light and color all over the city, and it was hard for me to not be seduced by it all, but that is where I would find all the action and moments that were significant for me. I would constantly look at the markets and whose shop would stand out for me and which ones attracted others. The buses that would constantly pass by on certain streets were crammed with passengers, or how the light hits each intersection and what walls would be accented were all eye catching.

I really wonder if people who live there everyday realize how perfect the setting is for amazing pictures. I sometimes think of my pictures in that sense. That possibly these pictures are just stills from the eyes of a Mexican who experiences these moments where color, lighting, and time harmonize. There are certainly things I wish to improve on and could have included in this. Maybe too often I am the viewer of these moments, and my presence in the moment is missing. I feel there is a raw-ness that is missing from my images. Things like shooting at night, in my travels, with my family could all contribute to a more complete view of how I see and experience the world.

I can't wait..