Swimming Elephant Team & Book Photo Editor
Swimming Elephant, a multi-media company founded by Shana Dressler in 2004, will be producing the photographic and video portion of this exhibit. Swimming Elephant’s team includes:
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Sudharak Olwe, Photojournalist and Logistics Coordinator for North India
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Raghunathan Yessar, Photojournalist and Logistics Coordinator for South India
Photo Editor of Ganesh Book
Interns
Shana Dressler, Photographer, Co-Curator, Producer
Shana Dressler’s career as a documentary journalist and producer has spanned a wide range of forms from stills to video to multimedia. Her most recent endeavor is a multifaceted project called Discovering Ganesh, which includes a multimedia exhibition, book, website and cultural tour about the Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesh. Ganesh is one of India’s most beloved Gods and has been revered for millennia as the Remover of Obstacles, the Lord of Beginnings and the Patron of the Arts. With the support of the Indian Tourism Board, Fuji Professional and New York’s prestigious photo lab, Duggal Digital Solutions, the work-in-progress has been showcased at the United Nations, the National Arts Club in New York, the Lille International Arts Festival (an hour outside of Paris), The International Houston Arts Festival, and most recently at the Jan Larsen Art Gallery in Brooklyn. In the fall of 2009, The Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn, New York will be exhibiting the full-scale multimedia exhibition; and a smaller version of the show will take place at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, CA.
In addition to Discovering Ganesh, Ms. Dressler has exhibited photographs from “If Only It Were Love” at New York University’s gallery space Casa Italiana in 2004. The project tells the story of an unrequited love story she had with an Italian underwater photographer while living in Rome in the early 1990s. From 1998 to 2000 she created a photo essay that captured the spiritual life in a Pentecostal church in Harlem entitled, "The Spirit That Runs Through The Holy Tabernacle Church.” A portfolio of this work is part of the permanent collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
As a video journalist Shana directed and co-produced "Can't Wait 'Til Sunday," with National Geographic photographer/cameraman Bob Sacha, a 10-minute documentary, which profiles Carl Graham, the pastor of the Holy Tabernacle Church. It was filmed on the last night of Pastor Graham’s 30-year career as a mechanic for the U.S. Postal Service. She has covered the "Drumming In The New Millenium" festival shot in Cairo, Egypt for World Entertainment Network and filmed station spots of world music stars such as Baaba Maal, Habib Koité, and Afro Celt Sound System for Link TV. Additionally she created three video shorts for Discovering Ganesh.
As a producer she has worked on “The Spirit of Fès,” a 17-city US tour of world sacred music, which included pre-concert colloquium on world peace by a panel of experts; a 10-part world music lecture and performance series entitled “Around the Globe in 10 Weeks”; and a photography project for teenage girls called “Around the World in New York City” with the Lower East Side Girls Club. She has been a consultant for the Global Peace Initiative of Women on their international youth summits, Link TV’s Music and Cultural Programming Department, and has consulted for many major music labels and entertainment companies in their new media departments in New York.
She received her photographic training at the International Center of Photography in New York where she took courses in photojournalism from 1993-1996 while studying comparative religion and anthropology at Columbia University from 1991-1994. She is a 1989 graduate of Vassar College with a B.A. in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Her web sites include: www.swimmingelephant.com, www.ifonlyitwerelove.com and www.shanadressler.com.
Tegy Thomas, Associate Producer, Swimming Elephant
Tegy Thomas resides in Washington, DC, and has worked on several film festivals, including the AFI/Discovery Silverdocs Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and the IFP Market and Filmmaker Conference. In June of 2005 he worked as Associate Producer on a multimedia slideshow about the Ganesh Festival in India at the United Nations in conjunction with New York based photojournalist, Shana Dressler. Tegy has also worked on the Kerry-Edwards Presidential campaign in 2004, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's campaign, and has interned in Senator Corzine's office. Other companies that Tegy has worked for include Nike Inc, Datek Online Holdings Corp, Voter News Service, and Signature Bank and Securities in New York City.
Tegy earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Manhattan College and is currently pursuing a master's degree in Organizational Development and Knowledge Management at George Mason University's School of Public Policy.
Sudharak Olwe, Photojournalist and Logistics Coordinator for North India
Sudharak Olwe is documentary photographer based in Mumbai whose work has being featured in national publications and exhibited in Mumbai, Delhi, Sweden, Portugal, Holland, Bangladesh and the United States. Mr. Olwe’s work focuses on the quiet, disturbing dramas of human life under conditions of exploitation and dislocation. He won a National Media Fellowship (1999-2000) and his photographs were selected by the World Press Photo Seminar program on gender and environment (2001-2003). Mr. Olwe has completed a book of photographs entitled "Spirited Souls: Winning Women of Mumbai" published by Samay Books (2004). In 2007 he was selected as one of four international photographers to participate in National Geographic's prestigious All Roads Festival which takes place in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. He is currently working on a book project and exhibition of non-governmental organizations in India for the United Nations.
Raghunathan Yessar, Photojournalist and Logistics Coordinator for South India
S.R. Raghunathan, a renowned press photographer based in Chennai, has been working at India's National Newspaper The Hindu for the past ten years. Previously he worked for 8 years at The Indian Express which is India's largest networking newspaper. He has both curated and participated in many national photo exhibitions. In 2006 he founded the Tamil Nadu Press Photographers Association, which services South Indian press photographers. The association currently has 450 members who come from 31 districts in South India. Mr. Raghunathan received his post-graduate diploma in Journalism and Mass Communication at Bharathiya Vidhya Bhavan, a premier institute that specializes in journalism and did advanced coursework in journalism at Madurai Kamaraj University. A Fulbright scholar, he has taught photography at the Madras University in Chennai, India. Currently he lectures about and teaches photojournalism in 12 colleges throughout Tamil Nadu.
Seshu Badrinath, Photo Editor of Ganesh Book
Seshu Badrinath began his career as an editorial photographer and his work has appeared in MSNBC.com, ESPN and slew of news and feature magazines. He has degrees in History and American Studies from California State University, Chico and a graduate degree in Journalism from Indiana University. He was trained in documentary photography at The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, in Portland, Maine. He completed internships at MSNBC.com and the News & Observer, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has worked as a photo researcher at Corbis and currently works as a photo editor for ESPN.com.
Seshu is deeply committed to promoting the arts, and more specifically photography, from South Asia. He publishes Tiffinbox, a blog that actively seeks unpublished photo and multimedia projects produced in South Asia. Seshu is a former board member of the South Asian Journalists Association and is still actively involved in that organization’s annual convention planning, acting as producer of the SAJA Photoforum, an annual photo exhibit showcasing the best editorial images from South Asia. At the 2007 convention, Seshu will be conducting his first photography workshop for the convention.
Seshu's wedding and portrait photography can be viewed at www.seshu.net.
Interns
Aapta Garg is an undergraduate at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York and will receive her B.A. in May 2008. She is currently pursuing a major in Political Science and a minor in Hispanic Studies. During the school year she serves as a research assistant for the Political Science Department. With the Discovering Ganesh project, she draws on her personal, religious and cultural beliefs and hopes to use the skills learned during her internship in writing her thesis.
Lavinia Ion is a graduate student in Media Studies and Film at The New School in New York. Her experience is mostly in advertising and publicity, but she is looking to make the turn to human rights. During her undergraduate degree, she studied for one year in India, where she fell in love with its people, effervescent colors and spirituality. India was also the place where she bought her first professional camera and started her photography work. Lavinia is utterly optimistic and she believes that all her accomplishments were made possible through a constant and fervent belief that dreams eventually become tangible successes. She loves dogs, adores her husband and best friend, Robert, and wears sacred jewelry. Discovering Ganesh is for Lavinia another proof that dreams do come true if you just believe in them.
Alysha Lalji has worked with various art organizations such as Aicon Gallery (formerly Gallery Arts India) and other non-profits including the Judd Foundation and Printed Matter. Currently, she attends New York University, majoring in Fine Arts and Gender and Sexuality Studies. With Discovering Ganesh, she hopes to combine her ethnic background with her interest in art and its reflection of the human condition and practices.
Ann Felski is currently a student at Syracuse University where she is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English and Textual Studies. During the summers after her Freshman and Sophomore years she worked for a film company that produced documentary shorts and public affairs programming and took classes at Brown University in Digital Video Production. For Discovering Ganesh, Ann put together an extensive list of possible funders including foundations, private donors and corporate sponsors.
Deepti Sharma is an undergraduate at Stony Brook University and will receive her B.A. in May 2008. She is currently pursuing a double major in Political Science and Business Management. During the school year she serves as an assistant to the curator of the Art Gallery at Stony Brook University. Her building interest in the fine arts has brought her closer to the Discovering Ganesh project to learn more about her own religion and culture.
Larissa Shulman is an undergraduate at Cornell University and will receive her B.A. in May 2008. She is currently pursuing a major in History with an emphasis on cultural studies. This past year she studied in Prague where she was able to enrich her knowledge of European cultural history at The Charles University. The Discovering Ganesh project has enabled her to go beyond the limits of her education to discover and learn about Hinduism and Indian culture. She hopes to apply the skills and knowledge gained from this experience to her future studies.
Shelley Yang is currently pursuing a degree in psychology at the University of Chicago with a special interest in how aesthetics affect the human senses. As a fledgling web designer, Shelley appreciates art and design and has been drawn to the beautiful colors that are found throughout India. With the Discovering Ganesh project, she hopes to gain a new perspective on the world by immersing herself in a culture completely different from her own. She will be studying Indian culture, civilization and Hindi in Pune, India this fall.