Michael Bühler-Rose: University of Florida
Better photography through cross-cultural living.
When Michael Bühler-Rose was 14, he joined the Hare Krishna movement, a Hindu-inspired religion usually known in the United States for its street-chanting, saffron-robed evangelists. At 18 he left his home in suburban New Jersey to live as a monk in temples around India, the group’s spiritual home.
Bühler-Rose performed priest’s duties stateside and in India for several years, before pursuing a joint BFA from Tufts University and the Boston Museum School. While at school, he began photographing Hare Krishnas in the United States and on his regular trips to their headquarters in West Bengal. Like him, many were Westerners who had adopted this Eastern lifestyle. Shot with a 4x5 wooden field camera and printed at sizes of at least 30x40 inches, Bühler-Rose’s intricate images invite viewers to spend time with their subjects and to get to know them as something besides “the other.”
Now 26 and pursuing his MFA at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Bühler-Rose is expanding this idea. He photographs Western women dressed in ornate Indian dancers’ costumes, often posing them (as above) to reference European paintings, such as Gauguin’s “Tahitian Women,” that are in discourse with Orientalism. By layering familiar and unfamiliar cultural references, Bühler-Rose’s photographs ask viewers to reexamine their ideas of the “exotic.” More images from this project can be seen at michaelbuhlerrose.com and at Art Cologne 2007 in Germany.
—Miki Johnson
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