#pradip malde

[images-that-inspire]

© Pradip Malde - from his photobook, From Where Loss Comes

Cutting trees, under which genital cutting procedure and ceremonies were performed.

[plaidbird]

NEVER ANY CLOUDS 14 Trees. Shadow. Fog. Sewanee, TN. December, 2007. Palladium-platinum print on vellum from 11×14 negative. by Pradip Malde

[ortodelmondo]

Retired ngariba Amina Hadiya and anti-FGM activist Christowaja Japhet © Pradip Malde 'From Where Loss Comes' published by Charcoal Press

[alternativephotographycom]

Is your drop the same size as mine?

Have you ever wondered if the size of a drop is always the same? Well even if you haven't, the answer is really interesting. Read on.

Have you ever wondered if the size of a drop is always the same? The short answer to the question of the size of a drop is that the volume of a drop usually does vary, in fact depending on 10 different factors. This is of course relevant to alt. proc. because recipes often specify “20 drops”, “20 gtt” or “20 gt” which also means drops. Writer and photography / Mike Ware and Pradip Malde Welcome…

[littlebrownmushroom]

Recently Received: From Where Loss Comes by Pradip Malde

[creativespark]

Pradip Malde, Banana Trees, Saut Maturin, Haiti 2007. From the series "The Third Heaven", 2006–2012

[morethan50shadesofgrey]

Pradip Malde

[thisgameisaplateaux]

©Pradip Malde Storm Circle, Kingston, Jamaica

[lightdarkroom]

to move in the wind

The past few days have been days where I have felt a choking stillness around me. My personal air has been hot and oppressive - and when I feel this way, I do silly things, like withdraw into myself and set off walking with no destination, contemplating not returning to the trappings around me. But would my nomadic whim carry me anywhere better? Not likely - because it's the air inside of me and not around me that is the oppressive one.

Many years ago now, a good friend and teacher told me that the reasons for unhappiness in my life could be considered this way: I had closed my fist to the wind, for inner safety; to be truly happy, I must be more open to sadness and to the whims of the wind. This is the way of being human. I needed to be a hand open in the wind, come what may.

So this morning, I rose early to look at his work, and to review my own work from years past. And I feel a little more like I can breathe again. I consider the texture of linen paper between my fingertips, the velvet shadows of a platinum-palladium print, the folded-silk highlights of sun on paper - and I can feel a path (beaten dirt but certain as stone) forming beneath my feet.

Even when the wind isn't blowing, we can remember it: the way it carries the scent of the autumn forest floor past us, how we cling to each other when it flurries snow around us in winter. If we do not forget the wind, we will not forget ourselves. This is the way of being human: remembering a fleeting thing and letting it move us, even years after it has passed. Do not forget.

[itsthegoodthings]

Tasveer Online | Pradip Malde | portraits Interview with my most favorite photographer (professor, mentor, friend), Pradip Malde, on the amazing portraits from his collection of photographs, "Prayer & Despair."

India, November, 1995. It is midweek, and there are priests, pilgrims and worshippers milling around us. Religion does not abide by the seven day cycle here. My parents are unusually quiet as we stand amid the bustle, gazing out at a tiered stretch of river. Damodarkund. They explain that this is where the ashes of my ancestors have been released over the centuries, into the still waters, along with flowers, prayers, tears, memories. Like smoke. I feel a lightness, something lifting. This is where I came from, this is where I am going. My hand is in the water, a conduit  and a key…

…Acceptance of anything can bring despair, and anything unbearable can inspire prayer. Kneeling down on the river bank, my hand in the clear water, I felt both.

photo:

Shiva, Jodhpur.

India, 1995. platinum-palladium print. 8x10 inches

[ortodelmondo]

Carolina Francis Kalungwama, behind her aunt, Julia Kalungwama. Both were cut as children. Julia is a former ngariba (cutter) and was assisted by Carolina. Mbalawala, near Dodoma, Tanzania. 2017 © Pradip Malde 'From Where Loss Comes' published by Charcoal Press

[alternativephotographycom]

Exhibition: Magic by Pradip Malde. Victoria, Australia, until 22 August 2021

Exhibition: Magic by Pradip Malde. Victoria, Australia, until 22 August 2021

Platinum Palladium prints. Pradip Malde is a photographer and professor at the University of the South Sewanee, in the USA, where he is the co-director of the Haiti Institute. Much of his work considers the experience of loss and how it serves as a catalyst for regeneration. He is currently working in rural communities in Haiti, Tanzania and Tennessee, designing models for community development…

[alternativephotographycom]

Routledge book discount

Get 20% off the series "Contemporary Practices in Alternative Process Photography" or any other Routledge book.

We recently published an interview with Christina Z. Andersson, editor of the Routledge series “Contemporary Practices in Alternative Process Photography” – see image below, and interviews with authors Pradip Malde, Mike Ware and Leanne McPhee. In any case, if this got you interested in any of the books, we have a discount on Routledge’s books for you. Click on THIS LINK and enter the code…

[lightdarkroom]

letters to a young artist, and baby sharks

I recently revisited one of my all-time favorite reads, Letters to a Young Artist. Modeled after Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, this is probably the best book to pick up when the world is getting you down if you're a creative mind. Don't let the minute page count fool you - despite being lighthearted, this isn't a light read. With letters from some of today's heavy hitters of the arts community, Letters packs a serious philosophical punch - all the more so because the advice is contradictory, agreeing only that the only real answer is the almighty pursuit of the question.

 I spent the first two-and-change years of my college career agonizing over the concept of the "final print" in my photography classes and the "final composition" in my poetry classes - only to be told just prior to graduation that I shouldn't have agonized because there was no such thing. I would always want to change a word, a line, a tone, a gesture - because there are an unlimited amount of things to be said with a single work or image, and so my best course of action would be...to be consistently creating written and photographic works to say those multitude of things. But why couldn't someone have told me sooner, that there was really nothing to tell me? Because all creative thinkers need to be like baby sharks. A mentor once gave me a piece of excellent advice on fledgling creativity, saying:

“Baby sharks are left to sink or swim on their own - no one shows them how to survive. In most craft-type work it’s easy to achieve when someone who knows how to do it stands there and tells you – but the sort of ingrained learning you need from this comes from teaching yourself through practice… teaching unfolds in different ways for different subjects. There is nothing but practice that can teach you how to [master an art] - just like learning martial arts – you have to do it without thinking about it. These are the challenges that arise when ambition and ideas are beyond the current level of [resource, outlet, skill, etc.] - but we just move ahead and learn as we go - our ideas as expressed through [creative output] become a process that unfolds over time. [Creativity] in the studio is perpetuated, in part, by this equation.”

Wise words, and ones that keep company with sentiments found in Letters to a Young Artist. The truth is in the question, not the answer; the process, not the product; the journey, not the destination. Pursuit (sometimes brazen, if necessary) of a creative goal in a creative way is the only lynch-pin ingredient in the recipe. Because beyond that single answer/product/destination, there lie innumerable others like it, and also different. The only certainty is that there is seeking to be done, and that expecting anyone to tell you how to do it is folly, because replicating a journey already taken will only get you to a destination that is not your own.