#saturated with colonialism and racism??? and she just chose to ignore that point of my paper and focus on me critiquing her fellow white

[fairyzar]

the older i get the more confused i become in regards to my identity.

#z escribe #i have been aware that i was adopted from a young age. heck i knew before my mom told me because i watched the health channel #and i rmbr they showed a skin color chart and i pieced together...two white parents don't equal a brown kid #and i thought that the colorblind mindset was a proper one to be brought up with. obviously not as i experienced racism in elementary. #and was extremely confused why 'other' white kids didn't see me as white either...well no shit you're not white baby aza #and i went through a radical phase during middle school. hating all white people. but then my mom's white fragility deterred me from that #as any time i would voice my anger she would... quite literally in tears... try to reason with me and be like ''but i'm white people... #do you hate me?'' to which i would always have to soothe her. and honestly i have become comfortable in identifying with mixed. #it is a comfortable identity because i have grown up without any specific culture (outside of american. which. how does one even begin to #define the complexities of such an identity... the way that american as a nationality transcends as it becomes a civil religion.) #anyways. i have been thinking about a guy at a party and our conversations. and how we got to our identities and i instantly... #out of habit really. told him ''well i'm half mexican or indigenous too... but i mean it's not like i'm really latin.'' and he was like. #''no azaria. you are. don't diminish yourself and your ancestors just because you weren't able to grow up around that culture'' #his comment made me think about my identity once again after a long time of not wondering what it means to be Me. #and i recently submitted a paper for an internship. and god. i was reading it to my white mom. and after i read the concluding paragraph #she asked me to read it again. to which i did. and then after a pause she sighed and said i was being ''too angry'' #and when i asked her to elaborate she simply said ''well it makes it sound as if white people are evil'' #mind you. my application paper is about working at a museum for african american/black art preservation. like. art history is so deeply #saturated with colonialism and racism??? and she just chose to ignore that point of my paper and focus on me critiquing her fellow white #people. and to categorize me as the 'angry black person' are you Fucking kidding me. but then even with that she was like. #''i just don't get why you're so angry. you're not even black. i mean. you don't look black at all. you look mexican'' #she constantly wants my identity to be simple. to be watered down. to be digestible. #i am the product of a biracial mother and fully latin/indigenous father. that is the truth of my identity. i will NEVER be perceived as #white. #but after that i just felt so incredibly shitty and called my sister and she told me what our mom said to her that day too. and i said #something along the lines of ''sometimes i feel as if mom thinks we owe her for adopting us.'' and my sister agreed. #it broke me. it really did. to know that i am not being overdramatic in my thoughts. to know that i am not simply being ungrateful. #my sister says that she copes with it by reasoning that our parents are born in the 40s and times were a lot different then. but it is hard #for me to constantly excuse their racism and ignorance towards my identity. both regarding my queerness and ethnicity. #i am so tired. so so tired.

[year3gurveerpadhal]

Project Conclusion

Over all I would say I have had a successful project. In the past I feel like I had been lacking in my technical execution of my shoots, even at the start of this project, I had been struggling with film, I had at least 3 hassleblad films that didn’t come out but On this last shoot, using 35 mm really aided my shooting process and over all quality of my work. I love some of the digital images but the quality of film really gave the images some naturalness and having less shots meant I had to be more selective. I can say that through this project I have really improved on my editing skills but also my ability to shoot portraits, By slowing down my process I am able to imagine what would make a good background but also how to appear non threatening to the subject, by being honest but also reading peoples body language before you ask. I am getting considerably less no’s. But I found that the most interesting people say no. There was a 80-year-old Indian woman who had old tattoos all over her body in the Hindu temple but she said no and there was a skinny Indian man in a full 3 piece suite with gold rings on all fingers with nail polish holding one of those small Nike bags. Perhaps shooting the subjects with out them knowing but it is the details in what they are wearing and how their gave makes you feel, that encapsulate the essence of someone, that is why all my portraits are consensual, it goes back to portrait paintings, almost like in the novel Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde) when a portrait is painted with such love and realism, the subjects soul is projected onto the canvas, I believe that is one of photography’s greatest achievement, as creates of emotion and body language ques seeing a face communicates a lot of information, more so then a landscape, what is more naturalist then photography?

 I chose to shoot my own area because it felt like a lot of people where going out to other countries for their projects but I feel like there is something powerful about a photographer making a statement about where they are from and subjective experience. I looking at the project new settlers by Louise Whelan, as much as I enjoyed this project there still was bits missing. Just seeing a singular pictures of people wit no explanation or back up source next to it, takes away the journalistic aspect of photography and portraiture. Also she photographed a broad group of people at the expense of the individual. That is not to say that this doesn’t work in some cases but I think when you are giving a voice to the voice less, you might not want to catalogue them so minimal and repetitiously. That is why I included all my archival and own source materials, because a collection of pictures of people simply because they are immigrants seems too much like over                    

Exotification to me, documenting immigrants because they are immigrants reminds me of colonialist photography, in which they would document the facial structures and body types of certain regions almost creating a bird book for people of colour. I am not saying that is what Whelan did but there is an element of the white gaze. Which is why I chose to photograph places that I remember in the area of West London, but I displayed the deep rooted history of my people not only as a whole but with in the context of England, the significant struggle that has plagued Southall and still Plagues the community, In 2017 Brittan like to pride ourselves on been a forward thinking, This is simply not true, the truth is I still get targeted by white men on the street, I still have people pointing out the differences between me and them. This project was a made as a response to people who try and colour in my experience, people who assume they can relate to my experience even though my problems are far removed from their own lives. I want to educate people on one of the newest world religions Sikhism and the warrior class that still thrives in London and India the Nihang (my cousin with the sword and the subject in font of the temple). I wanted to tell the story of Sikh men and businesses in my work, which is why I focused so heavily on the Sikh community in the beginning. Also as a form of catharsis, In Bristol I miss being around other Sikh people and London, only since coming to Bristol I realised there are many people in the UK who have no idea of Sikh people let alone have meeting a brown person, being from London I never considered this, that is why I chose to represent the Sikh’s in London (west). The downfall of the Sikh empire was directly linked to the British involvement (the throne of our last ruler Ranjit Singh on display at the VA). It is interesting to see the progression from Colonies, to independence, to Indians unionising as Britons working class to the people who have been going strong ever since to the younger generation of devoted Sikhs, the only young people in the portfolio are Nihang Singhs. Although I think the project isn’t finished, there are still some gaps and types of people I want to represent but I think considering the amount of time I spent in southall I have done all right. Whelan describes new settlers as a portrait of herself in some ways, I don’t see how that is the case when she isn’t one of the immigrants who are coming into a country that is ruled by the white settlers who stole their land from the natives, I don’t see anything that is a reflection of her or that has anything to do with her in the project, all I am saying is it is easy to make comments on things that have nothing to do with you, I made it a goal to do a project that shows you what might have shaped me both geographically and politically. I included family members, I revisited places of childhood and my life before university, I discovered the history of my people and of the area it self. I reconnected with the people of Southall and Hounslow because I had been living there most of my life. I know it for all the bull shit and all the amazing people who helped me a long the way, helping each other out is something the immigrant county prides itself on. This is a project that doesn’t appeal to the white gaze which is why it can seem more radical then it is intending to be. The racist graffiti will have anyone’s stomach turn, this is what happens when you turn down all Exoticfation, you get the ugly truth. I chose to alienates some people because I am sick of people acting like we live in a country which is beyond racism, people who would rather ignore the truth, This being something that was painted near my house proves that it still happens to me, that they cant keep telling our stories for us.        

 For the exhibition I am going to do a mamiya or hassleblad shoot, this is because I am going to do a study of both of my cousins, one has old timey clothes from india (which he is keeping a surprise) it will be based on the Guru on the cover of the unbound portfolio next to a horse with the council block in the background (horse shoot of last year), this location has come to represent the England we are now in, the classical English landscape wit the tower blocks raised like boils and I will re shoot y Nihang cousin wit the antique sword. This project will be continuing for me, my next step is the youth and the vanishing bad boy/ boy racers, that the next step and interviewing IWA members. I want to make documenting the story of the Sikhs and the history around the world, will become the a main theme in my photographic career, I must deeply thank my time doing this project in uni and guidance for this revelation, this project has shown me photographers greatest ability is to bring the world to people, how would we even conceive of the north pole or the deep ocean with out photography? The photograph has always shaped our perceptions of reality outside of our current situation; I want to give people an education through visual documentations of history as it is happening.  

 I am no closer to naming this project but (Southall: a brief history of the Sikhs in multiple formats) might be it. I already saod the Silk screen like cover explains the project because it is like a ready made or Warhol’s mona lisa and the act of filtering this great piece if art through that process is a metaphor for traditional values being filtered through very industrial and a unpredictable medium which represents what happens to the immigrant, when you have been brought up that way, being in England you tend to feel like your experience is saturated with confusion when you realise what your parents taught you might not be relevant to you. But again the Image of Guru Gobind Singh Gi on this horse armed is a statement of the equipped, war ready nomad which is what a Sikh needs to be.

I wish i did a sketch book because tumblr is really dodgy and doesn't upload everything if you upload more then 10 posts, it throws things to of order and make it kind of hard to organise, it can take days to post a big and it doesn't have as much of a flow, i a going to stop mapping ideas on a web blog and start with a book. The blog starts at the bottom and this is the last post.   

Overall I think this project was a success, although I wish I had more shoots so I could have made a full book but this has set me up for after university, there are many avenues in terms of documenting and studying the Sikhs and Sikhism, this project has given me a new found passion and reason to photograph as well as rediscovering my roots, having found archive photos of Sikh saints or the years of struggle and achievement of the IWA, I have really found a calling and this project has given a much needed view of the Sikh working class in west London. The documentary on the IWA made me want to do a somewhat of a documentary with my portfolio but this is a rough skeleton of something much bigger, Its all about taking this to the next step.