From James Estrin’s article for The New York Times:
“Growing up in India, Manjari Sharma spent vacations with her parents experiencing the vivid sounds, sights and smells of Hindu temples throughout the country. She remembers all of her senses being engaged, and the anticipation of encountering paintings or statues of Hindu deities as she entered temples that were centuries or even millennia old.
In India, there is often little separation between religion and state, so paintings and other representations of Hindu gods are everywhere. But, of course, not photographs of the gods.
At least until Ms. Sharma undertook her elaborate darshan project, enlisting dozens of artisans and craftspeople to create complex sets, costumes and prosthetics around a human posing as a deity. Each photo took weeks to make on a set in Mumbai. The resulting series, which is on view at the ClampArt Gallery in Manhattan, opened on Thursday and continues through Oct. 12.”
View Manjari Sharma’s series, “Darshan”
Browse all of Manjari Sharma’s work at ClampArt