Street Dreams - Satish Sharma

This extract from Sharma’s photograph collection perfectly captures the contemporary westernising of the true Indian cultural identity, and he creates a photo collection showing the exact opposite. He states that western concepts of Indian culture only benefit the wealthy and privileged Indians, which I fully agree with. All the traditional practices within India that are westernised for visual purposes are physically crafted by the lower class, the people who don’t get any recognition, and they don’t even crave it. The wealthy in India have the means to sell culture to Westerners, identifying with the artificial, ‘refined’ version of Indian culture.

This links to my description of the westernising of Rabari culture, the colours and jewellery which are solely used for the recreation of typical western products with a ‘cultural touch’. For the visuals, instead of directly portraying this through imagery, I chose a more human and personal aspect of life, being beauty. Although it doesn’t hold the full contents of westernisation, I think the obnoxious and barely filtered choice of western advertisements surrounding the trends of beauty perfectly contrasts to the feelings of home in my culture that I want to capture.

Sharma’s photographs capture the raw and untouched feelings of home when I look back at the traditional Indian side of my childhood. I think this is done through the complete natural essence in the photos, through the unedited clothing and makeup. The people in the photos are completely themselves, with no refinements for the western world. I can catch a sense of familiarity from the photos, which makes them more personal to work with. This is beneficial to me because it allows me to really dive into a concept based project, which is something I can struggle with.