I have labeled these murals, Kali Murals. Some are from the 1991 Kali Puja and others are from the 1993 Puja. They were photographed in Kurmatuli, an area of Calcutta India where the potters build statues for Hindu festivals, using an old style wooden 8x10 Deardorff camera on an extremely heavy Gitzo tripod containing an also heavy Manfrotto leveling head. I used tungsten long exposure film and heavily filtered it to the specific lighting conditions where the various murals were photographed. My exposures were usually eight to ten minutes long, which presented problems in the very crowded lane ways as seen in the image above.

My goal at the time was to try and make very large scale gum prints by literally piecing together sections of 8x10 imagery to make a mechanical photocopy of the "thing" in this case religious iconography which I had photographed. It wasn't until I had the 8"x10" transparencies from one of the murals laying on my large illuminated light box, that I became captivated by the juxtaposition of imagery that I was seeing. The images when butted together did not line up perfectly. In fact they were awkward and happenstance but highly visually captivating and suddenly I imagined working with hundreds of images and that creative fever took hold of my mind. Exactly as drinking unsanitary water had done to my gut while working during those early on trips to India.

In 1994 I switched over to 35 mm. The 8"x10" system was not practical for working with more imagery within any given mural. Changing mechanical systems symbolized for me moving away from that feel of being a fully fledged "photographer". The large clumsy system was like a badge in the manner of the old masters, but working with hundreds of images to create something that does not exist in reality seemed to complete an unfulfilled creative hunger that burned within me then and still does today.