ok=trueWomen Of The Lamani Tribe , Karnataka - South India&0=3&headline=&text=&headlineen=THE WOMEN OF THE LAMANI GYPSY TRIBE&texten=I met the Lamani women for the first time when I travelled through Southern India in 2002, in the Village Hampi in Karnataka: As street vendors selling hande-made cloths in their typical traditional style, colourful and with little mirrows stitched into the fabric.
What caught my attention was the way they dressed, how they made up their hair, their tatoos on the feet, hands and sometimes their face, the large silver juwelery on their wrists, ankles and in the hair.
But what really fascinated me, was when the "folkloristic point of view" changed - and a kind of confrontation started - when a stern and serious glance of their powerfull eyes met with mine. It was a firmness that almost blew me away and which signaled "do not mess with me, don´t come to close".
One morning, shortly after sunrise, as I was strolling through the alleys of Hampi, I met Lakshmi in front of her house. A woman in her mid-40th, hanging out there with her mother maybe in her 60th and her daughter Somni, in her mid twenties. And Somni´s two little kids, she had with a man from Switzerland. While mother and grandmother where traditionally dressed, Somni was wearing a normal Indian Sari.
As we were chatting, I asked why she wasn´t wearing the traditional clothes, like her mum and grandmother. Her answer was fierce: That it was stupid in modern times of broadband, mp3 players and cel phones to get dressed-up this way. She scoldingly talked about the pain of tatooing, the weight of pounds of silver dangling from the ankles: And why - she asked - would she voluntarily expose her low cast to the public (The Lamanis belong to the lowest cast level in India).
She called it "behaving like living 100 years back". If she dressed traditionally, she would have to sew her own clothes in endless hours and days, three sets of each (one for every day, one for hollidays and one for special occasions, like a wedding). She would have to spend a fortune on it, instead of buying a cheap Sari. She argued how uncomfortable these thick and stiff clothes were, particular during the heat.
She also talked about her tribe ignoring changing times, about the social exclusion of the Lamanis, living in secluded villages and being badly educated. She critized the holding on to the circle of poverty and of being owned by landlords.
___________________
When I shot this series in the 2005, only the old women were still dressed in the traditional style. The younger Lamanis were all wearing common Indian Saris. There were no silver juweleries, nor tatoos to be seen. Only for special occasions some of the younger Lamanis still wore one set of hand-made clothes.
To find Lamanis who were still steeped into their tradition, I had to travel to remote villages, miles away from any national highway, or small town. Chandri Giri, where i finally ended up, is one of these still traditional villages that holds about a thousand Lamanis. The pavement ends at the entrance of the village. People live in raw brick houses that are funded by the Indian government. What looks like desert around the village, are actually fields.
In places like Chandri Giri, or Ginna Pur tradition implies, that girls are getting married at age 12 to 14. Traditional life keeps them in poverty, allowing them only to work on the fields, to cut sugar cane, or to break stones for the streets.They grow up with a bad, or no education at all. Illiteracy is still wide spread.
At the same time, Lamani women are famous for their strength, they are reknown as excellent field workers with a salary only a third of the men´s gain, for the same work. There is a saying about the physical strenght: There is nothing a man can do, a Lamani woman could not do.
Lamani women start their day long before dawn. They make fire and clean their house and yard while the men are still sound asleep. Often they function as the village speaker and take care of the family finances. Although they fight and argue with their husbands, he will always have the last word.
But one day, while shooting, they protected my assistant Bilas and me from their drunken husbands who approached us violently, pressing us either to give them houndreds of dollars, or to leave the village. They negociated for us, so we could shoot another 48 hours. On the other hand, they were clever enough to endlessly ask for more money as negociated first and they screamed and went angrily after us, if I did not agree.
Lamanis - they never forget their strength.
___________________
FACTS
The series was shoot in the Distrikt of Hospet, in the Southern Indian State Karnataka in the year 2005. I worked with a 195 Polaroid Land Camera on Polaroid 665 film (positive/negative). The negatives had been digitalised with an Imacon 848.
___________________
THANK YOU
My gratitude belongs to the generous fund of the KULTURSTIFTUNG BONN / VG BILD-KUNST, without their funds the project still would be only in my phantasy.
To the village speaker Piremma from the Rangapur Tanda, who greatly organised and helped us in convincing the women and protecting us.
To CALUMET PHOTOGRAPHIC Hamburg for supporting the Imacon scanner.
And last but not least, to my friend, assistant and translator Bilas Nair from Trivandrum/Kerala, who calmly and with humor helped me in my struggles and kept a keen eye on the wet negatives in the field.
&pdf=&pdfen=