People of India

About

A liberal arts school, Spring Arbor University requires each student to go on a cross-cultural trip prior to graduating. For the month of January 2017, a group of us (15 students and our instructors, professor Wally Metts and his wife) journeyed various regions throughout India to immerse ourselves in the culture, learn about its history, and begin to understand its people.

For myself, (hi I'm Camille), the trip sparked a conviction to learn how best not only to capture moments but to capture them ethically, responsibly, and honestly. Sometimes that meant assessing the situation as reverent or uncapturable and shutting off my camera, being invested wholly through the lens of my eyes. However, in many situations, I found my camera was a tool of interaction with these new acquaintances, a way to break the ice and become personal. 

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But how do you rightfully capture the essence of a place, of a person? How do you respectfully snap a photo in passing? How does this act not become intrusive? A process of perspective, this trip brought about many questions that will undoubtedly carry on throughout my life as a photographer, as a communications person, and as a traveler.

In reanalyzing our time in India, I'm thrilled to note the tremendous growth that was inevitable for all of us. Cross-cultural trips sometimes get a reputation of being consummatory; that the travelers simply go on their own agenda, rampaging through the foreign land only to return home without a single thought to the deeper issues at hand. Yet I truly believe that our group was a unique one, one that honed in on necessary observations. 

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This site is the final project for the course; a reflection on our time in India and a culmination of what I learned and what I was able to capture. I'm eager to continue broadening my perspective and I hope that through this project I can share some ways in which it was broadened there. Thanks for visiting!