RAMAYANA TATTOOS

"It is at these religious events that one connects with humanity at its basic denominator, and with the nobility of the human spirit."

That's a quote from a longer statement I made to accompany a handful of photographs published in the December issue of the Asian Geographic Passport which can be partially previewed here.

I am waiting for a hard copy of the issue to be mailed to me from the publishers, so that's all I can show at this time.

In any event, the religious rituals I submitted photographs of are the Theyyam rituals of Northern Kerala and of the Tsechus of Bhutan. The photographs are included in my Theyyam: Incarnate Deities and Tsechus!.

I am influenced by Sebastiao Salgado's philosophy which he described by saying: "if you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things.". This is my way of seeing things as well...I find it impossible to photograph otherwise.

Photos © Jaime Ocampo-Rangel- All Rights Reserved

"I dreamt of a rainbow built with the colours of men, tribes, cultures. The rainbow of a rare, diverse, precious, essential, yet fragile human nature. This Memory of colours, old as the wind, the sun and rain is a slow process. It is a story in progress that needs to be listened to, seen, protected and helped." -Jaime Ocampo-Rangel

And this, in a nutshell, is what Jaime Ocampo-Rangle's Memory of Colors is all about.

It's a terrific and phenomenal magnum opus from a Colombian photographer who sought to document the last authentic tribes, people and ethnic groups of the world that are threatened by globalisation. Jaime chose to complete the project by sailing around the world.

Forty ethnic groups have already been documented and another hundred identified, and those hundred will be visited, filmed and photographed to fulfill the ultimate goal of the project, which is to represent the real landscape of our multi-cultural earth.




Memory of Colors may keep you glued to your computer's monitor for a while, so if you have urgent stuff to do, you may want to watch the 5 minute trailer of the project, do the stuff you have to take care of, return and explore the website more fully at your leisure. If you're interested in travel photography, anthropology and ethnography, it's really worth it.

Finally, Memory of Colors was mentioned on The Luminous Landscape website, and it gives some details on the equipment used and background of the photographer.

While in Siem Reap, I dropped by the Old Market and stocked up on traditional Khmer scarves with the intention of having them embroidered with The Travel Photographer logo, and making a fortune selling them online.

While having lunch at The Soup Dragon, I showed the manager my The Travel Photographer's pouch that had that logo, and asked if he knew of a store that could duplicate it...and indeed he did! Scribbling the name and address of the place in Khmer on a scrap of paper, he said it wasn't too far from the restaurant, and that it was just opposite a secondary school which used it to embroider its tshirts etc. Perfect!

I hired a tuk-tuk driver (Chen, who was to remain as my driver for the duration of my stay) and we went looking for the embroidery shop. I expected to see a computer-driven embroidery machine, but all I saw was an electric sewing machine and a woman who assured me (through Chen) that she could duplicate the logo quite easily. I wrote it down in my best capitalized handwriting, gave her my old krama for a trial run and was told to return in 20 minutes. Perfect!

Spending these ensuing 20 minutes thinking of having all my stack of kramas embroidered with my logo, returning to the US and selling them online at a monumental profit, was very enjoyable. However, these dreams of untold riches came tumbling down when I was returned my old krama with the logo as you can see from the above photographs...the L in Travel was deemed superfluous by the semastress and I got The Trave Photographer instead.

The poor woman was mortified and tried to convince me she could fix the error...but I just laughed it off. Yes, my get-rich-quick scheme collapsed because of a dropped letter. The moral of the story is this: make sure your outsourcing contractor can write English.

That being said, the mistake on this scarf (especially as it has been worn for a number of years) could well make it very valuable. As an example, the mistakenly inverted Jenny stamp was auctioned for $1 million!