COLLAGE
Past, Present, and Future of Indian Women

Why I Chose These Photographs For My Collage

The main objective of the Cross Cultural Solutions Saheli Program was to meet with the women of India to forge a better understanding of the challenges facing women in India; i.e. improving education, meeting food needs, and improving living conditions. During a three week period, we made a whirl wind trip through the desert regions of Rajasthan visiting schools, NGOs, families and professional women dedicated to meeting difficult challenges in a harsh environment.

Three weeks is certainly not enough time to explore these challenges in depth. I Considered this program like an introductory class. I sometimes found that my western prejudices extolling the beauty of the villages with their simple structures had to be tempered with the reality of living in mud huts with no running water or electricity and the need for people everywhere to improve their daily lives.

During the program, I was torn between the need to listen and learn and the need to capture the images around me. As a result, some images are forever impressed in my head while other images were captured on film. After returning to the US, I began to sort through my photographs looking for images that would illustrate what I had seen and experienced.

As I sorted through the images for the collage, I noticed that they fell into three categories: past, present and future of Indian women. Although many of the images could be placed into more than one category, I have placed them as follows:

PAST Sati Hands, Mehrangarh Fort, Bikaner Hawa Mahal, Jaipur Taj Mahal, Agra PRESENT Mehndi Hand, Mehndi Party, Jaipur Bishnoi Women, Jodhpur area Bishnoi woman and child Farm mother with child Woman carrying load on head FUTURE Teacher, Dundlod Classroom near Bikaner	To see each individual photograph used in the collage and for more information on each photograph, click here. If you entered the web site through a search engine and did not see the splash page, click here to see the complete collage.