Poras Chaudhary: Colors of India

Poras Chaudhary is a freelance photojournalist and a documentary photographer, who started photography in earnest in 2005. Influenced by the work of various Magnum photographers, he is self-taught photographer and prefers highly saturated color work.

He won a number of awards including the Digital Camera Magazine’s ‘Photographer of the Year’ award in 2006, National Geographic Traveler’s photo contest Merit Award winner in 2008 as well as being a Runner Up in ‘Epson Color Imaging Contest 2008’.

While the above image is of Poras' gallery "Festival of Colors", I'd suggest you also navigate to his Ladakh gallery, where you'll see one of the best photographs of his collection; the three Bakarwal shepherds.

Holi, also called the Festival of Colors, is a popular Hindu spring festival observed in India, Nepal,Bangladesh, and countries with large Hindu diaspora, and is said to have a medicinal reasons. The spring season is believed to cause viral fever and cold, and the colored powders used during the festival are made of Ayurvedic medicinal herbs.

Perhaps we should try this out to combat H1N1 flu infections?

"posted by TTP robot"

Robot Posts

I will be traveling over the course of the coming few weeks, and will have intermittent access to the internet...just in case however, i've set up a number of posts that will be "robot" posted during that time, as I did whilst on my February photo-expedition. I hope to be able to report now and then on my photographic "exploits" in Cairo etc.

I wish I had a robotic assistant as cute as Wall.E !

Gianfranco Tripodo: Wat Bang Phra

I saw the work of Gianfranco Tripodo mentioned in a Lightstalkers forum discussion, and noticed he documented the ritualistic tattooing at the Thai temple of Wat Bang Phra, near Bangkok as I did a couple of years ago. His gallery is titled Sak Yant: Thai Magical Tattoo.

Gianfranco Tripodo is a photojournalist currently based in Madrid, Spain, and is a member of Cesuralab Agency, an Italian photo collective under the artistic direction of Alex Majoli, Magnum Photos. He was published in L’Espresso, IoDonna, El Pais and worked with PhotoEspaña Festival.

I've already posted a number of posts on Wat Bang Phra and its tattooing monks here. It's worth casting an eye on the posts to understand the importance of these religious (or "magical") tattoos to the Thais.

My own gallery The Tattooing Monks of Wat Bang Phra is on my website, and I noticed that one of the tattooing monks appears in both Gianfranco's gallery and mine.