RAMAYANA TATTOOS

Photo © Brenden Allen-All Rights Reserved

Since Myanmar is all in the news, with Aung San Suu Kyi meeting with Hillary Clinton during her official trip to that country -- the first visit by a U.S. Secretary of State in half a century -- which is described by some as a breakthrough moment in U.S.-Burma relations, I thought it timely to feature some fresh photographic work from Myanmar.

Photo © Aditya Kapoor-All Rights Reserved

I met Aditya Kapoor at the Delhi Photo Festival in October where he asked me astute questions regarding multimedia, and then at the Angkor Photo Festival in Siem Reap a few weeks ago. 

I thought i'd feature his work titled As They Are which underscores the fact that only the unintelligent and unthinking resort to stereotyping others. Aditya had the opportunity to photograph Indian Muslims posing in sets decorated with plastic flowers, against backdrops of gaudy colors and life-size cut-outs of Bollywood stars as "partners". He also showed this work during a portfolio review in Siem Reap.

Based in Delhi, Aditya covers socio-political issues and undertakes reportage, portraiture and photo features for the likes of The Independent, Getty Images, Financial Times, Hindustan Times, Mint (WSJ), Aljazeera, Tehelka magazine, andOutlook. He also worked on commissioned assignments for Pepsi, Cartier, Ferrari, Ericsson, United Nations, CARE, Star News, The Indian Ministry of Tourism and The Common Wealth Games Federation.

Most of the big picture blogs and news outlets such as The WSJ Photo Journal, Boston's Globe's The Big Picture, The Denver Post's PBlog and Reuters' Full Focus, amongst many others, will soon feature their version of the best photographs of 2011. So taking their lead, I am featuring what I liked best of my own photographs made during the past 12 months. I'm not saying these are the best photographically speaking of all my 2011 images, but I like them...and I suppose that counts for something. They are a mix of pure travel photography and documentary/reportage style.

The 20 or so images were made during my two 2011 Photo Expeditions/Workshops to Gujarat and Kolkata. I've added traditional Turkish music to provide the accompaniment to the slideshow.

I know...I ought to have chosen some Indian sitar music instead, but I couldn't find a track in my library that matched my mood today. My apologies to the purists.