Saturday, 24 September 2011

In Focus: Hindu Festivals

Photo © Dibyangshu Sarkar—AFP/Getty Images

Photo © Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri

Photo © AP Photo/Manish Swarup

What an incredible but timely coincidence!

In Focus, the photo blog of The Atlantic, has just featured 39 photographs of Hindu festivals...and yes, you guessed it, 3 of those are of the preparations for the Durga Puja in Kolkata.

I am traveling this evening from London to Delhi, where I'll spend a couple of nights, then on to Kolkata to for my Kolkata's Cult of Durga Photo Expedition/Workshop.

The expedition/workshop will involve a lot of street photography, and at its core is the Durga Puja festivities. We plan to document the festivities from the making of the clay idols and their delivery to the neighborhoods' pandals to their final immersion in the Hooghly river.

It appears that the weather for Kolkata might be intermittently rainy during the Durga Puja week, but I also expect we shall have glorious light quality when the rain stops.

Call Me KIJU

Here are impromptu street portraits of Kiju on Crosby Street in Soho, NYC. Kiju is an alternative rock performer.