"Siblings" Stuart Gelzer

"Siblings" Stuart Gelzer. Fungar Vilage, Uttarakhand, India, 2018. Photograph.  20" x 16". Framed

The Indian state of Uttarakhand lies immediately west of Nepal and shares its high mountain landscape. Uttarakhand itself, a little smaller than West Virginia, is divided into two districts, Garhwal to the west and Kumaon to the east.

In the spring of 2018 I returned to Garhwal and Kumaon for the first time in forty years. I spent a few weeks in Mussoorie, the town where I went to high school. After that I traveled widely in eastern Kumaon, sometimes in hill towns like Ranikhet and Nainital and Champawat and Almora, but mostly in remote mountain villages.

I was accompanying a group of researchers investigating sites where, between the 1900s and the 1930s, a legendary hunter, Jim Corbett, tracked and killed about a dozen man-eating tigers and leopards that preyed on the Kumaoni hill population. (For example, the Champawat Tiger and the Panar Leopard each killed over 400 people.)I went to Kumaon this time expecting to focus on landscape photography, my emphasis in New Mexico. But I found myself drawn to people, especially people at work, both in remote hill villages and in the markets of larger towns. India is still a place where humans are cheaper and more abundant than machines, and many of the subjects of these photographs spend their lives doing by hand what we have long since been privileged to automate and motorize.

40 years on 4 continents. - I grew up in West Africa and India and wanted to be an archaeologist. Instead I’ve been a screenwriter, a film editor (Fallout, 1995), a drama teacher, and a singer specializing in folk music from the Republic of Georgia. These days when I’m not taking pictures I teach film at Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM, and write novels and travel memoir.

For images taken before the mid-2000s I shot film, using a Canon FTb. For images taken since the mid-2000s I shoot digital, using successive generations of Canon EOS.

All prints are signed; all matting materials are acid-free.  

http://www.stuartgelzerphotography.com/

Stuart Gelzer is represented at 2 Ten Galeria on the Plaza in Las Vegas NM

All rights belonging to the holder of the copyright, including the reproduction rights, shall remain with the Artist.

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All rights belonging to the holder of the copyright, including the reproduction rights, shall remain with the Artist.

In the event transportation of a purchased item is required, arrangements and direct billing will be handled outside the auction venue.