Whether crawling into a kitchen cabinet to exhume a forgotten pot or sneaking into a hidden alley to discover a new culture, I have always explored every corner of my world. In the past several years, I have journeyed to Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, Poland, Israel, Kazakhstan, and India. I have gleaned from my travels endless memories of personal interactions and witnessed countless illustrations of common humanity, but have largely guarded them from view.
After 19 years, 13 countries, thousands of travel photographs, and hundreds of academic papers, why start sharing now?
In Hindi, lal gulab means “red rose.” To me it is my inspiration. This flower moves me to observe and create. It encourages me to absorb my surroundings and impart my musings. It motivates me to communicate my experiences through imagery and prose. It awakens in me a need to express.
During the summer of 2009, I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop with Exposure, the Tufts University group devoted to photography and human rights. Under the watchful eyes of photojournalists Sara Terry and Asim Rafiqui, we travelled to Ajmer, India to venture into the community and craft stories that explored the aftermath of conflict. I hoped to continue researching my academic interests in ethno-national crises, identity politics, and local forms of reconciliation. I intended to use my camera merely as a vehicle to document my intellectual pursuits.
Upon reaching Ajmer, my relationship with my camera changed forever. I learned to gauge the proper exposure, to construct a balanced composition, to paint images with color and light. I discovered how to connect with my subject, to own my space, to make a thoughtful photograph. It was this experience behind the camera that not only altered my technical ability, but also illuminated my personal aesthetic and articulated the private language of my images. I had finally internalized my photographic process.
And then the lal gulab found me. In the context of my story, it identified itself as a symbol of syncretism, the quintessence of coexistence, the depiction of diversity. But more strikingly, it pushed me to turn my journey inwards, to magnify the lessons I had learned, and channel them into poetry and metaphors. From the concepts that had existed solely in the academic spaces of my mind, the lal gulab constructed a seamless bridge that guided these germinating ideas into a new space of artistic expression.
Despite the distress of civil war and the heartbreak of common greed, I still believe in the lal gulab. In a world too often consumed by cultural ignorance, violent extremism, and indiscriminate hate, this blog is an attempt to celebrate those moments of hope and oases of peace.
–Britt
