Ladakh Pinhole 2006
This portfolio represents a body of work that arises from my exploration of Ladakh, India in July 2006. Ladakh is a remote province on the border of China and Pakistan. This trip was really a continuation of my explorations of India and my heritage there, which I have expressed in an ongoing series of photographic and video works entitled “Waking from Dreams of India”.
Cut off from the dominant cultural influences of the rest of India by the imposing barrier of the Himalaya, this area has more cultural affinity with Tibet than it does with the Indian subcontinent. Primarily a Buddhist region, where ancient traditions of religion and ways of life have changed very little for centuries, this part of the country retains quiet, contemplative traditions that have been largely forgotten in the more populated regions. In the rest of my explorations of India, I found that the density of population, media saturation, and competitive, material-oriented lifestyle had actually exceeded that of the West in many ways. It wasn’t until I had the chance to visit Ladakh, that I truly felt the spirituality that many Western visitors travel to India to experience. Here I had to slow down and take my time.
In the context of this environment, I wanted my photographic practice to reflect a slower, traditional low-tech lifestyle, so I opted to use a large format pinhole (lensless) camera. With this simple instrument, with its long exposure times and wide-angle point of view, I felt able to make images that reflected the slow passage of time and vast spaces that characterize this region. The long exposure times necessitated by the tiny pinhole aperture of my camera encouraged leisurely conversations with the Buddhist monks who had devoted their lives to quiet contemplation and prayer in monasteries little changed since the 11th century. This approach is a real divergence from the primarily digital practice that I have pursued in the rest of my India work, which expresses the frantic pace of modernization in the country’s urban centers. I am hoping that the slower process of these quiet images will give me some space to contemplate my own photographic practice, and provide a breathing space to examine my explorations of India so far.
