Alumna's photography project featured in Huffington Post

Alumna Manjari Sharma (CCAD 2004) was featured in the Huffington Post's iPad issue for her photography project Darshan.

The article, MOVING IMAGE: Recreating the Gods, describes her ongoing project of photographically representing Hindu gods and goddesses.

Sharma began the project by creating an image of the Hindu goddess Maa Laxmi. She then used Kickstarter to raise money to help her continue and expand her project. She raised nearly $26,000 to create the gods Ganesha, Shiva, Durga, and Hanuman.

“Darshan is a Sanskrit word that means ’sight,’ ’view’ or ’vision,’” Sharma wrote on her Kickstarter site. “My project, Darshan, aims to photographically recreate nine classical images of gods and goddesses pivotal to mythological stories in Hinduism.”

Creating each photograph is no small task and requires the help of nearly three dozen people. Everything in the photo is created in a studio—including the set, costumes, jewelry, props, makeup, and more. The first image alone took more than three weeks and cost nearly $5,000 to put together.

Sharma and the Darshan project were recently featured in The New York Times and NPR. Her other photographic projects, including her Shower Series, led her to be named to the Best of 2010 by the American Society of Media Photographers.