So far I have spent the longest time in Pushkar. I really loved being there, not only for its feel but the people I met and the food I ate! I did some quite fun photography projects there (six) and I will dedicate this blog to all my Pushkar photos.
Photography
I think this has been my most creative and successful outlet. I wasn’t really expecting it to be such fun. When I first when travelling to the developing world with Adrian in 1985 I was very embarrassed about being a tourist and taking photos but he encouraged me and I wouldn’t be without a camera on any holiday. Over the years I have made probably about 100 black flip albums and 10 traditional albums before digital photography came in. Right up until the mid-2000s when we bought our first EOS camera. I then went onto making albums with PhotoBox online and the products are of good quality and are fantastic memories of lots of happy times and travels.
I have an EOS with me here today as it is light and just what I need to catalogue what I have been up to.
Chai Pots
I really liked drinking out of chai pots. They are considered disposable and we first had them at the top of the road watching the elephants returning from Amber Fort whilst staying at the Mosaics Guesthouse. I kept them as I wanted to grow my plants in them – well at least some of the flowers I would raise from seedlings. I drank coffee and collected a load of used chai pots around the Savitri temple after my early morning climb to get there for sunrise.
But when I realised that this wasn’t going to be possible and I was not allowed to send them in my first shipment back to the UK I decided to photograph them before leaving them behind in Pushkar with Ravi in the Dia Homestay.
Felt Flowers
I realised I was going to need to send a shipment home as I was overwhelmed with bags of too much stuff. I did manage to get from Highgate Tube to Heathrow via the Tube but this is because. This included a load of things I had brought with just to photograph or make myself feel inspired and would also be comforting to me.
This meant it was time to photograph the wonderful felt flowers I had bought in my colour theme (lilac) from the Folk-Art Museum in New York. I visited this compact museum in September 2019 and brought these serene felt flowers. https://folkartmuseum.org/
I then tried to photograph them in as many interesting ways as possible including; in the sun, in my room, in a ‘vase’ and tied to the back of my chair like a wedding posy.
Everything was themed purple. Funny as I had dried flowers for my wedding posy and these were equally not fresh nor made of felt. Some of the shots were really over-exposed which I really liked and some were under the sun umbrella I had bought in Jaipur for Betsy which I was going to post to her.
But that was going to cost 2000 rupees and the umbrella only cost 200 so I thought I would wait and give it to her in person.
Fire and Lights
At night in the Secret Garden I had fun trying to take interesting shots of the fire we made (to keep warm and heat up the pizzas!)
and also the lights in the garden by swinging the camera round in spirals to complement my theme.
The Secret Garden was a wonderful oasis of calm – well you still could hear the weddings – just outside Pushkar. With respect to my photography.
There were some terrible results but some really interesting ones. I wonder with a smaller camera I could have spun it round faster.
Or maybe I needed less bright lights before the exposure was finished. Anyway, all trial and error. Certainly fun.
Adult and Baby Personas
I had brought out a number of items that I specifically wanted to use in photographs which would need to go back in my first shipment.
This included my stethoscope, my rabbit Benjamin who needed quite a bit of repair work and went for several coffees with me in Pushkar to do this, cuffs (which I wish I had kept as it is often cold at night), hiking boots as my trainers will do as well as some felted baby slippers. I enjoyed arranging them into an adult and baby personas and seeing if I could make them sit up.
However it was very difficult to photograph them in the whole so I did lots of detailed photographs and planned to print them off and show them as a collage.
I was inspired to do this by David Hockney’s fabulous work. He also inspired me to get a pen to do electronic drawings. However, I am no Hockney!
Amlas – a very sour fruit indeed
I know that Ravi (the Dia Homestay manager) liked to use amla (a very sour fruit indeed) in pickles and his nephew Sonu in his juice bar.
So when I stayed overnight at the Secret Garden with Marie and Anoop I picked loads to give him climbing up trees and using it as a counting system for my runs.
Anoop suggested I run either seven or 19 times round the garden. But I couldn’t keep count so on every round I collected an amla.
Then I put these 19 in my top and twizzled it around to go back to my room. I took a self-timer video of them all spilling out. Here it is – Kerry Robinson said it was ok to use it. Something about emptying yourself out!
Ribbons and Stone
I had a really successful morning getting 92 photos from 3 tied up purple ribbons and the stone I was given at the end of the Bridge Retreat.
Contentment was my happiest childhood memory and it was making coffees out of mud in our garden under the apple trees. Another fun memory was having a bath with my sister Sukey and turning hair on the side of the bath into interesting shapes and telling her it was the Japanese letter for x for instance. She did believe me for a while!
It was fun, not just taking the photos, but also thinking of ways to display them eventually at the installation I want to hold after my sabbatical.
One way was to display them digitally on a loop with 0.5 seconds per picture and for it to make a click like an old-fashioned slide projector as each slide is changed. I saw this recently (without the click) at an art show. It reminded me of the days of getting slides printed out and using carousels. I once entered a competition at the Royal Society of Medicine for the Paediatric Registrars Prize in 1994. I insisted on using a double carousel which I warned against – as you can get them out of sync but I managed and I won! My mum was there to schep naches (from Yiddish שעפּן נחת means ‘derive pride’).
The end of Pushkar Photography.
My next blog will cover what I completed in Rajasthan before I came to see textiles in Gujarat.
