Charlotte Rush-Bailey: Blood & Turmeric

Charlotte Rush-Bailey is a photographer who migrated to the world of photography from a corporate career that covered three decades of marketing and communications positions in a variety of global industries including energy, financial services, media, conservation, technology and professional services. This gave her opportunities to work with people all over the world, and to learn to appreciate cultural nuances and the influences of socio-political forces.

She has just produced her audio-slideshow Blood And Turmeric of her stills and ambient sound recordings made during the festival of the Oracles in Kodungallur whilst participating in my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop™.

So hold on to your seats, you'll get sweaty palms perhaps...but I'm certain you'll be bowled over by it.

The festival is called Kodungallur Bharani, a wild and unusual localized religious festival near Kochi. It is here that once a year the so-called Oracles of Kodungallur meet to celebrate both Kali and Shiva. By their thousands, these red-clad oracles arrive in this area of Kerala, and perform self mortification acts by banging on their heads with ceremonial swords repeatedly until blood trickle down their foreheads, and daub the wounds with turmeric.

Mitchell Kanashkevich: Ethiopia

Photo © Mitchell Kanashkevich-All Rights Reserved

“Will I ever come back to Ethiopia?”

A question asked by Mitchell Kanashkevich after spending over four months in that country, crisscrossing it on a motorbike.

He doesn't ask it because of logistics, or because of practicalities...but rather he wonders if he would want to ever come back to Ethiopia. I chose to feature his post to counter balance my earlier post on Holland Cotter's Ethiopian experience because they are so divergent.

I won't go into the details of Mitchell's reasons for his largely negative personal experiences in Ethiopia since you can read it directly on his blog, but these range from onerous restrictions and regulations imposed by authorities to make some money off foreign visitors to "money hungry scheming locals" in Lalibela and other religious towns.

Mitchell Kanashkevich is amongst a handful of travel photographers who are truly intrepid, experienced and who produce consistently excellent imagery, so his experiences in Ethiopia ought to be heeded by independent travelers who want to visit Ethiopia the way he did. I'm not suggesting that travelers ought to be put off by his current mindset, but they certainly ought to pay attention to what he tells us...and prepare themselves for potential difficulties.

It is one thing to travel to Ethiopia (and wherever else) on assignment with The New York Times, and quite another to travel the way Mitchell did. Fixers, hotel accommodations, transportation are a world apart between these two.

As for the obnoxious and puerile comments that Mitchell's post seems to have generated, it's unfortunate. Some people don't realize the service that Mitchell has provided...they may disagree with it, they may not like it...but he related his personal experience, and he's free to express it as he sees fit...wherever and whenever he wants.

I traveled to Ethiopia in 2004, and my experience was different. But that was 8 years ago, and I traveled differently. However if I were to return to Ethiopia, I'd reread Mitchell's post very carefully.

The New York Times: Aksum & Lalibela

Photo © Damon Winter-Courtesy The New York Times

Here's what I found to be a very well made (and thoroughly researched) feature by The New York Times titled Aksum And Lalibela: A Pilgrimage with the prose of Holland Cotter and the photography of Damon Winter.

"Lalibela was conceived as a paradise on earth."

Cotter tells us that he had longed to see two holy cities in Ethiopia: Aksum, the country's center of Orthodox Christianity, and Lalibela, a town of extraordinary churches carved from volcanic rock in the 13th century, for a long time and he did visit it recently.

The treat in this interactive feature are the panoramas of Gondar, the monasteries of Lake Tana and Lalibela. I was in Ethiopia in 2004, and these panoramic views brought it all back to me as nothing else could. I wasn't very impressed by Gondar then, but the majesty of Lalibela churches and the beauty of the reclusive monasteries of Lake Tana made my experience in Northern Ethiopia exceptionally memorable.

An exceptionally engaging article by Holland Cotter is here. He has been a staff art critic at The New York Times since 1998. Don't miss Damon Winters' dozen photographs of Lalibela, Aksum, and Gondar which accompany the articles.

And since I mentioned that I've been in that region some 8 years ago, drop by my own gallery Footsteps In Abyssinia. Oh, how I wish I had my multimedia knowledge and tools then!!!

The Oracles Of Kodungallur

The Oracles of Kodungallur celebrate their festival in the Bhagawati temple, which usually occurs between the months of March and April. It involves sacrifice of cocks and shedding of the Oracles own blood, to appease the goddess Kali and her demons who are said to relish blood offerings.

"It was one of the most intense photographic experience I've had in a long while."

The festival is overseen by the aging King of Kodungallur where hordes of Oracles (Vellichapads in local Malayalam) stampede around the temple waving their curved swords while chanting abuse at the goddess.

This 4 minutes movie (using SoundSlides for the still photographs and Audacity to edit its audio, and then converted to a movie file) was made of material gathered during my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop™. I struggled with putting its audio all together, and it's still far from perfect, and I intend to refine it in weeks to come, but it will do the time being.

It was one of the most intense photographic experience I've had in a long while, even surpassing the intensity of the Maha Kumbh Mela in 2001. The seeming abandon with which the Oracles injured themselves by repeatedly striking their foreheads with their swords was disturbing at first but, in due time, I realized that their companions made sure that it didn't go too far, and took care that in the heat of their trances, the Oracles didn't injure anyone else.

Not for the fainthearted, it was also a draining experience over two long days for all the participants in my workshop, and I admired the women in our group who immersed themselves in photographing and documenting this event...not an easy task in view of the density and raucousness of the crowds. We returned every night to our hotel, exhausted, filthy, sweaty, thirsty and covered with turmeric powder...but exhilarated by what we saw and photographed.

And that's the image of the SoundSlides' interface. I print and use it as a scratchpad/storyboard...jotting down timings etc.

Anthony Pond: 10,000 Verses

Anthony Pond has just produced another audio slideshow of black and white photographs made at the Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam Vedic Institute in Thrissur, Kerela, India where young novices spend five years learning Vedic chants.

It was made during my The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition/Workshop™ when I arranged a photo shoot at this ancient Vedic gurukul (a training and boarding school very similar to Buddhist monasteries for its novitiates, or Muslim madrasas) in Thrissur, where we were allowed to attend demonstrations of this way of teaching and reciting sacred Vedic scriptures.

One of the suggestions I make during my workshops was that essays produced by its participants ought to have intriguing titles. I certainly think Anthony did well with his one.

Anthony worked for more than two decades in the criminal courts in California as an attorney for the Public Defender’s Office. Now pursuing his passion for travel and photography, he travels repeatedly to South East Asia and India, amongst other places, to capture life, the people and the culture.

You can view more of Anthony's audio slideshows on his Vimeo page.

John Spillane: The Fishermen of Kerala

John Spillane is from Cork, Ireland and works in IT Network support in the pharmaceutical sector. A landscape photographer, John has recently diversified into travel and people photography and to that end, traveled to Italy, Cuba, Namibia and Bhutan...as well as his native Ireland.

His interest in photography started when he was 8 with a Kodak 126 Instamatic. In the 80s, John moved to an Olympus OM10 with a 50mm lens until the early nineties when he started shooting slide film, used a tripod and started working with graduated filters and polarizers for landscapes. He started his digital photography in 2006 with a Nikon D200 purchased while passing through Singapore.

During my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop, John worked on a number of multimedia photo projects and has now published his very first attempt at Soundslides with his The Usual Catch; an audio slideshow of black & white stills of the fishermen of Punnapra in Kerala.

It was his first travel experience to India. And he certainly got his India "baptism" in an unusual but unforgettable fashion when he encountered the so-called Oracles at the Bharani festival. Covered in turmeric powder, and his Nikons dangling at his sides...he told me he had never imagined it would be like that.

I was promised a pint (perhaps two) of Murphy's Irish Stout if I visited County Cork. It's a worthy inducement.

The Wakhan Corridor

The Wakhan Corridor is a slender area in the far north-eastern Afghanistan which forms a land link between Afghanistan and China. The corridor was a political creation of the Great Game, and a result of agreements between Britain and Russia in 1873 and between Britain and Afghanistan in 1893. It currently has 12,000 inhabitants, who live very much the same as their ancestors did centuries ago.

In 2011, inspired by an article published by the New York Times, Fabrice Nadjari and Varial, two 33 year-old authors, photographers and childhood friends, decided to embark on a journey in the Wakhan region. It is here that they decided to take photographs of the inhabitants of the Wakhan villages. The portraits made with their Polaroid cameras developed odd hues, and their quality deteriorated quite rapidly due to the altitude.

The photographers also produced the Traces of Time book project (to be published in May 2012) which they claim "presents a vision between a current and tangible printed reality that already ceases to exist and an uncertain present resembling the past. This is the perspective of travellers who steal a snapshot of life and leave behind a trace that could change the lives of those they've passed."

As is seen in the trailer (listen to the haunting soundtrack!!) above, the photographers convinced Ismaili children, young women, and housewives, opium smokers, village chiefs and simple peasants to pose for their Polaroid cameras.

The show Wakhan, An Other Afghanistan will be featured at the MILK Gallery, 450 West 15th Street in New York (May 18-23, 2012).

Verdict: The Oracles of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

"...the uniqueness of this photo expedition-workshop..."

That's how one of the group members started to express his satisfaction in having attended The Oracles Of Kerala Photo-Expedition-Workshop while bidding goodbye to me and the rest of the group.

Uniqueness! It's precisely what I strive for when I structure my itineraries and programs for my photo expeditions/workshops. Are all of those based on unique itineraries? Of course not...but most of them are. The Oracles Of Kerala Photo-Expedition-Workshop was based on two main Hindu religious festivals: Thirunakkara Arattu Utsavam, a 10-day temple festival, and the Kodungallur Bharani, a wild and unusual localized religious festival near Kochi. The former is a Hindu religious extravaganza with elephants, while the latter surpasses the famed Kumbh Mela in intensity. To my knowledge, no travel photographer has ever dared to conduct a photo trip/workshop covering these two festivals. 


This uniqueness of this photo expedition-workshop, as well as the positive group dynamics among its group members, certainly places it amongst the top three I have ever organized and led so far.

Spice Godown-Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Now cutting to the chase, here are the planned photo shoots that worked well:


1. The Fishermen of Punnapra. 
2. The Vedic School in Thrissur.
3. The Thirunakkara Arattu Utsavam Festival. (Drummers & elephants galore)
4. The Shadow Puppets near Cheruthuruthy. (Excellent!)
5. The Kathakali performance at the Kerala Kalamandalam. (Superb!)
6. The Kodungallur Bharani aka The Festival of Oracles. (Incredibly Intense).

Vedic Gurukul-Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Although the group members liked the photo shoot at the Mattencherry spice godowns, it was rather mundane, at least from my perspective. The photo shoot at the Kochi Chinese nets was passable. The photo shoot planned at the oldest mosque in India known as the Cheraman Juma Masjid was a total failure from a visual standpoint. Nothing of its original structure remains, and its artefacts are copies of the originals (lost or pilfered). I can add to this that no one can make non Muslim visitors feel more unwelcome to mosques as blinkered Islamic clerics. The short visit to the adjacent Islamic school was, in contrast, a pleasant experience with delightful young students.

I fault myself for not having double checked the information provided by our guide which resulted in our being late in attending the last day of the Thirunakkara Arattu Utsavam Festival. The local policemen saved the day by getting some of us through the throngs of people. They were very helpful, and wanted us to get to the best vantage points, and as close to the elephants as possible.

Logistically, the photo expedition worked well. All the hotels were of high standard (mostly in the 4-star category), and their staff were very helpful. I must mention here Mr Bijou, the restaurant manager at the ABAD Whispering Palms Resort, who is an encyclopedic source for Keralite religious festivals. I wished he had joined us on the trip. 

Temple Lighting-Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

It was a little disappointing that the ABAD Whispering Palms Resort in Kumarakom didn't have an alcohol license, but we nevertheless managed to procure the bottles of beer so necessary for our well-being after long photo shoots. That said, the hotel provided us with a conference room where we met daily to work on our slideshows, and edit our photographs...so it more than made up for its lack of alcohol license!

The vehicle used to transport us was more than adequate, and was driven with skill by Haris Aziz, a delightful and reliable young man with a good sense of humor. He quickly became our group's go-to-man for whatever we needed. In contrast, the guide allocated to us by the local travel agent was ineffectual, and was out of depth. He was more suitable for elderly tourist groups interested in museums and history, not for a bunch of gung-ho travel photographers. I couldn't find it in me to fire him, but I should have. 

Lastly, it was immensely gratifying to witness how seriously all of the group members worked at their multimedia projects; often while exhausted. Two of the 7 photographers in the group had already attended my previous Kolkata workshop, so had a substantial head start but worked as diligently as the rest. One of us had an extremely uncooperative laptop that crashed frequently, but who never lost his sense of humor nor his interest in learning multimedia. 

To be assured that the 7 group members were fully familiar with SoundSlides and Audacity, I suggested they completed a 2-3 minutes multimedia project in less than 3 hours.

They did.

Rasha Yousif: The Vedic School

Rasha Yousif is a photographer from the island nation of Bahrain, and is only the second Middle Eastern participant in my photo expeditions-workshops since I started them 10 years or so ago. She is a portfolio manager, and has a Masters in Finance from DePaul University.

During my The Oracles Of Kerala Photo Expedition-Workshop, Rasha worked on a number of multimedia photo projects and is one of the first to publish her very first attempt at Soundslides with her Five Hundred Years Vedic School.

In most of her projects, Rasha has easily connected with people and used this ability to add personal voice clips to her sound tracks. You'll hear such a clip in her Vedic School project.

She is quite adept in using her iPhone for on-the-fly photography, and to record the progress of her work during the two weeks in Kerala.

Photo © Rasha Yousif- All Rights Reserved

I had arranged for a photo shoot at an ancient Vedic (or training/boarding school very similar to the Buddhist monasteries for novitiates, or a Muslim madrasa in Thrissur, where we were treated to a demonstration of this way of teaching the sacred Vedic scriptures.