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Volume CXXXIII, Number 1 |
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Photo show opens eyes to lives of Nepal's women
TED REINERT
ORIENT STAFF
"Mahatwapurna Kura Cameramaa Rakidinusna," said senior Emma Raynes to 17 Nepali women last spring, or "put your important things in the camera." This is the title of Raynes' photo exhibition now on display at the Visual Arts Center in the outside Kresge Auditorium and in the fishbowl.
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| Emma Raynes with posters she brought back from Nepal for her exhibition. (Hans Law, Bowdoin Orient) |
Raynes, a Visual Arts major with a substantial interest in anthropology, studied near Kathmandu in Nepal last spring through a Pitzer College program in which students took intensive courses to learn the Nepali language and culture while they lived with host families. After three months there, she moved to the high-altitude Anapurna region to do an independent study on Aamatole women in the Gurung caste villages of Sikkles and Tangting.
Throughout her time in Nepal, Raynes worked on her photography project on the side. She gave women disposable cameras to take shots of what they found important in their lives, then interviewed them about their pictures. Raynes took black and white portrait shots of the women as well. The women received doubles or polaroids. "People loved that," said Raynes. "I was in a place where people don't have pictures of themselves."
The idea of giving cameras to subjects came from an encounter in a meat market in China in the summer of 2002. Raynes was traveling with Nancy Riley's Contemporary Chinese Society class, a journey that yielded a photo exhibition displayed in Smith Union last December. After she took a picture of a man in the market, she let him take a picture of her. By giving the cameras to others, Raynes aims to "transcend the power difference between photographer and subject." Raynes cites artist Wendy Ewald as an inspiration. Ewald has taught children in places of extreme cultural conflict to use cameras and let children write on her portraits of them. Her technique is called collaborative portraiture.
Raynes has a particular interest in the voices of women. "In Asian cultures women are not treated as equal to men, nor are they in American cultures," she says. "Men and women are both humans, why are men 'superior' around the world? I'm interested in seeing how women resist this suppression, how they deal with it."
In Nepal, Raynes was treated as a member of her household and had to abide by Hindu rules, which place most of the house and field work on the women. Raynes said that as a woman she was not treated with the respect a man gets, but her gender opened up communication lines with Nepali women that would have been closed to men.
"Giving them cameras gave them an opportunity to express themselves in a way they would never think of doing," she said. Upon seeing her photos, Tikka Kumari Bhahadur, 34, exclaimed "I cannot read or write, but I am good at taking pictures!"
The 17 women range in age from 5 to 70. Banita Ranabat, 12, took pictures of the sun, of "the wheat that makes our bread," of her mother. Bijaya Laxmi Gurung, 11, took a picture of her schoolbook, "because studying is the most important thing in my life." Goma Bandari, 25, who worked in the photo store, asked Raynes if she could be in the project. "I have never taken a photo before," she said. "For me, photographs are food."
For the "Mahatwapurna Kura Cameramaa Rakidinusna" show, Raynes arranged the photos in collages (which include photocopied children's drawings, cloth, a mirror, and even cinderblocks) juxtaposed with quotes from the photographers to put them in context. There are also two books in the exhibition devoted to a pair of Nepali women that Raynes had a wealth of material for.
The fishbowl on the ground floor of the VAC contains Raynes' related exhibition "An Experience of Nepali Visual Culture," which combines posters from Nepal with her color photos. The posters, which are rising in popularity in the more urban areas of the country, range in topic from inspirational quotes to Hindu deities to Nepal's royal family and soap stars to American wrestler The Rock.
Raynes received a Surdna Fellowship to fund the exhibition and her living expenses this summer as she put it together. Art professor Mike Kolster sponsored Raynes' Fellowship. "Regardless of whether the Surdna came through, Emma was going to do it anyway," Kolster said. Kolster says that the school acknowledged the validity and importance of Raynes' ideas through the grant of Fellowship. "Emma was open to taking a lot of different risks," said Kolster.
The opening for the exhibition was held last Friday evening. Raynes wore her Nepali garb. Students milled around taking in the project and snacking on refreshments.
"I think it's amazing because of all the time she spent getting to know the people and putting together the exhibit," said freshman Laura Doore, whose pre-orientation trip was co-led by Raynes.
"I told my subjects that I would take their pictures back to the
United States to show them to my family and friends," writes Raynes
in her artist's statement. "I told them that perhaps their images
would teach Americans about the lives of Nepali women…. So this is
what I am doing."
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