{"id":607,"date":"2016-02-19T11:54:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T16:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/?p=607"},"modified":"2016-02-19T11:54:03","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T16:54:03","slug":"documenting-a-disappearing-way-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/2016\/02\/19\/documenting-a-disappearing-way-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Documenting a Disappearing Way of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"praveen-chaudhry-03\"I am always glad to have an opportunity to share the amazing variety of work our faculty produce at FIT.\u00a0We have such an opportunity in the campus showing of Praveen Chaudhry\u2019s moving photography\u00a0exhibit, Invisible Nomads of the Himalayas: A Life Caught in Turmoil<\/em>. At a faculty convocation last year, I\u00a0asked Chaudhry to share photographs of his travels with the nomadic tribespeople in the mountainous\u00a0areas of China and India, where political and military forces have nearly eradicated the nomadic way of\u00a0life that has for centuries been the center of production of cashmere and pashmina. The stories he told\u00a0were as chilling as they were enlightening.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll indigenous cultures are under enormous pressure and many are disappearing,\u201d said Professor\u00a0Chaudhry, a political scientist who is a member of our Social Sciences department. \u201cThe nomadic\u00a0cultures I travelled with will all be gone in 10 years. But these are remarkable people. They are culturally\u00a0significant, especially for anyone interested in the study of diversity and cooperation. These Buddhist\u00a0shepherds and Muslim weavers have been cooperating in peace in the harshest of environments to\u00a0make pashmina for hundreds of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Chaudhry describes his work as \u201cvisual anthropology,\u201d and his success in taking meaningful\u00a0images is, he says, a result of living and travelling with his subjects for months at a time, often through\u00a0arduous conditions. None of the photos are staged because he lived among these communities long\u00a0enough so that people were comfortable with him and allowed him inside their personal worlds.<\/p>\n

\"praveen-chaudhry-01\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>
\"praveen-chaudhry-02\" <\/a> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Professor Chaudhry took a photography course on campus and credits the photography department for\u00a0helping him develop his considerable skill. He hopes to publish the photographs as a book\u2014and I\u00a0certainly hope he will.<\/p>\n

The exhibit, which has been shown at galleries here in the U.S. as well as in India and Mexico, is on view\u00a0in the lobby of the Marvin Feldman building through February 26. Professor Chaudhry will give a talk\u00a0and slide presentation of his work on Wednesday, February 24, at 6:00 pm in the Katie Murphy\u00a0Amphitheater. The talk is sponsored jointly by the Presidential Scholars program and the dean of the\u00a0School of Liberal Arts.<\/p>\n

\"praveen-chaudhry-04\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am always glad to have an opportunity to share the amazing variety of work our faculty produce at FIT.\u00a0We have such an opportunity in the campus showing of Praveen Chaudhry\u2019s moving photography\u00a0exhibit, Invisible Nomads of the Himalayas: A Life Caught in Turmoil. At a faculty convocation last year, I\u00a0asked Chaudhry to share photographs of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":436,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35538,70687],"tags":[9543,12779,4069,16583],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-2","category-diversity","tag-diversity","tag-exhibition","tag-photography","tag-school-of-liberal-arts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ycDS-9N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/436"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fitnyc.edu\/onmymind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}