Darśan: Seeing the Divine Image in India by Diana L. Eck

This book was a short read, but it was packed with interesting information that could relate to my avatar approach for field work (trying on different lenses and experimenting with different mediums to see how different my experiences can be).

The word "darśan" means "to see" in Sanskrit.  It is about "seeing the divine image, and it is the single most common and significant element of Hindu worship" (preface).  Yet, the author does not stop there, she says that we all do this, and makes devotes a lot of attention to the mediums of film and photography that relate directly to my project.

She says that "it has sometimes been claimed that the photograph is a kind of universal 'language,' but our reflections here make us question such a claim.  Every photograph and film raises the question of point-of-view and perspective- both that of the maker and that of the viewer."  It also "raises the question of meaning" and of "obstruction," and that we have to understand the context to really know.  A picture may "be worth a thousand words, but still we need to know which thousand words" (16).

This will go great with some of my previous literature such as Walter Benjamin in his collection of essays Illuminations that look specifically at the medium of photography in regards to an original and authenticity.  Super fascinating!  It is nice to have a source looking at India that can back it up.  Even though it is not specifically about Dharamsala, I think that there are a lot of similarities when it comes to looking at something so exotic of Westerners. 

Eck, Diana L.  Darśan:  Seeing the Divine Image in India.  New York:  Columbia University Press, 1998.  Print.