Sunday, August 26, 2007

Bali: Island of Spirits

Image Copyright © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Here's my new gallery of photographs entitled Bali: Island of Spirits (link below). One of the most interesting traits of the Balinese people is their belief in animism and ancestor worship, in addition to their Hindu traditions. The Balinese term sekala niskala or visible-invisible describes how the physical world is suffused by a spirit world. Understandably, the spirits are honored everywhere on the island with offerings of flowers and other materials....hence the title.

This is not a linear "storyboard" photo essay, but images which I deem to be representative of the Balinese spiritual life. I also included images of the traditional dance as these usually take place at religious ceremonies, and included a couple of non-graphic photographs made during cremations, which I hope impart the solemnity of such events.

I've now established a Basic acount with Zenfolio, the web-based image-sharing website of my earlier post this week. I found it to be intuituve and easy to set up. However, I'm preparing a more complex slideshow with narration and ambient audio which should be ready in a few weeks on my regular website.

My Zenfolio home page features the photographs in thumbnail gallery fashion...I prefer to view them in a slideshow (upper right corner) format. The slideshow feature has an icon that provides captions to each photograph.

Bali: Island of Spirits.

No comments:

Post a Comment