Like a River ~

A layered, visual and material story, depicting Ganga from her source in Himalaya to Varanasi. Images and tiny stones collected in 2006 and 2026. Sacred in Indian culture ~ along its course, the river is home to a rich ecosystem and ancestral traditions.

In 2006, during a journey from Varanasi to Gomukh, the source of Ganges, I took about 200 photographs, B/W and colour, with Olympus and Canon cameras / Leica lenses. Walking on the quiet mountain path, I experienced the river as a living being and felt strongly connected to it. It was through that gaze that I tried to capture its shape, rhythm, 'breath', its texture and 'voice'. The negatives are of high resolution and when printed professionally on fine art paper, the images bring out a vibrant sense of how the river and the life along its course feels. As online dissemination I chose for low resolution, small format montage -- a ‘narrative’ about walking along the river: www.iulianavarodi.com/ganga.html (see also vimeo.com/352409618?fl=pl&fe=sh - home printed draft montage ~ playing with formats).

In 2015, during another journey to India, I focussed more on life on the Ghats in Varanasi, and worked with a digital camera (Canon, Leica lens). The intention was to capture subtle sides of urban life along the banks of the river. A small selection is here https://iulianavarodi.com/river2015.pdf. These images would be best valorised if printed in various sizes, composed like a 'mood board' and displayed on a wall opposite to the wall with the pictures took in 2006 and 2026 (as described above and below). Based on my fresh experience with self-publishing, I intend to realise a new book with the photographs that I will select for the exhibition proposed hereby, potentially with a couple of poems or essays - such as www.iulianavarodi.com/waves.htm at the beginning and the end of the book.

I plan to walk the same path once again, and take a series of photographs from the same points and angles as in 2006 www.iulianavarodi.com/ganga.html, to document how the river and the landscape have changed. I will use the same analog technologies (same cameras, lenses and negative types like in 2006) and juxtapose the photographs from 2006 with the ones to be taken in 2026. From each palce where a picture will be taken, I will collect a small stone, to be used later on in an installation/ exhibition of photography.

Artistic research aspect: through this work, I will deepen my understanding of the materiality of photography as artistic practice, regarding subject and object, at all the levels of the process: the landscape and everyday life they portray (erosion, evolution), the cameras and films that I use, different techniques of printing and of dissemination (online, physical exhibition, installation, publication).