In the video below (that I recorded in Rwanda during the trip), I take you through the equipment that we used for video and stills and why we used it. Everything I say is something what can be translated into gear from other companies as well when it comes to the choice of lenses for instance. At the end what is important is what you want to tell with your pictures and that should determine what gear you use.

In Mumbai, it is not uncommon to see young people holding hands and kissing each other. It appears not many other places in India where man and woman does not have physical contact in public. Marine Drive. © Emile Carlsen

Broad, warm, dirty and immensely long: the asfalt road stretches through the city form north to south heavily loaded with all kinds of vehicles. Cars, trucks, rickshaws, motorbikes, scooters, busses, bicycles and pedestrians are drifting in and out of the lines in a stressful chaos; a chaos that doesn’t let your heart keep its normal pace. Motorbikes move fast through invisble passages that suddenly appear between two cars. Huge busses overtake bikes with whole families stuffed together on the back seat. Clouds of dark diesel exhale pollute the airways of children and adults, while highly pitched squeeking from sudden breaking blends in the soundscape of thousands of engines and the angry honking from every single vehicle on the road. It seems to be a perfect chaos and I’m happy not to be the driver here. The traffic has a logic of it’s own that is as foreign to me as the sound of the Mahrati language.

On the very first day in Mumbai, as the sun shone through the light roof of green branches of the old trees flanking the busy boulevards, and as the architectural splendour of the old Victorian buildings revealed itself in daylight we fell in love with the place. Equally refreshended by the free winds from the sea as by the liberal approach to life that is more expressed here than in any other part of India we have seen so far, and exhausted by the tumult and harshness of the streets we were left exhausted and overwhelmed every night. Mumbai shows the essence of India’s development through the last twenty years: with its high population density it is a conglomerate of cultures, religions and lifestyles concentrated in a peninsula of bustling activity, where seventy percent of capital transactions of Indias economy is generated.

It is a city that gives and takes. It gives you the feeling that there is more to it than you can see, that around the next corner you’ll find new adventures or the person you dreamt of all your life. It takes your time and it takes your control, you become a leaf in the river floating along forced to follow the turns and waves of the city. It gives you the opportunity to see it all at the same time at the same spot, and it keeps an unbelievable balance in the maintaining of contrasts without blurring or compromising any of the extremes.

Like oil and water that doesn’t blend this place has every thinkable extreme side by side to it’s diametral opposition: the most incredibly deformed boy is begging for money with an eager grimasse while passing the street on all four. Slow and heavy cows linger through the shopping arcade where the glass facade of a camera shop is centimeters from beeing hit by the dense, pointed horns on top of the otherwise friendly cow face. Modern young women selfconfident in their tight jeans and short hair, eager to move the stairs of fortune and succes are strolling the streets along with traditionally dressed ladies in sarees accompanied by the jingle of dusins of glimmering bangles. People without a home, without shoes and with only their own effort and luck to assure them a daily meal are sleeping on the back lane of the most expensive hotel in town.

A bleeding, half dead rat is cramping in the dirt under the stand of a streetkitchen where a dusin young men have their omelette and tea. Kilometers of plain asfalt of the Marine Drive along the western shore, where young couples meet to hold hands, talk and even kiss in public, take the traffic from one of the city’s slums, where the heavy smell of fish mixes with smoke from burning trash piles, to one of the most exclusive and expensive areas of town. The skyline makes a clear outline of what to find here: immense wealth. At a cafe by the beach past the fisherboats, a cup of coffee costs more than a day laborer earns from eight hours of hard physical work.

One day walking the main street of Colaba the area of old Mumbai where the hotels, the fancy cafés and the moneymakers are and where millions of ruppees are changing hands every hour, I saw a young woman sitting barefooted against a wall. Her black hair was brown and messy from dirt, her body clumsily wrapped in a worn out dress which original colours had become blurred by too much struggle: she wore nothing underneath it and her face showed no concern about the fact that pedestrians had a clear look to her most intimate bodyparts. There was almost no expression at all in her scrawny face. And yet the look of harassed fatique and surrender, of letting go of it all and giving in to the obvious suffering radiated from her whole being, while houndreds of people passed her without giving her a single look. The woman on the street of Colaba was for me the most sad and terrifying picture of the human condition I’ve experienced for a long time: suffering in the midst of ignorance. People were not looking. People were not helping. People were not caring, they chose not to. Whatever the relations are, whatever the conditions are, we always have a choice. In the end that is what makes us human.

Our plan was to stay three nights in Mumbai but the river of contrasts took us away and kept us intrigued. We extended our stay more than a week until our schedule left us with no choice but leaving. Driving away from a city with more than twenty million people leaves you with a sense of relief that you’re free to go, but also of hope and energy from the density of human beings, their dreams, their struggles and their victories.

What’s going on with HUMANS (or what’s cooking as a friend from Haiti would say.)? What happens with all the material from Africa? Where is the project going? Today I want to give you a little view behind the scenes of HUMANS.

Since we came back from the big journey through Africa, we saw the project develop in different directions. Not only saw we the first film by Yann Verbecke in December about Francis from Southern France, a month after we came back, a new team started travelling to India and still are till beginning of April. Right now updates are sometimes a bit slow caused to the big milage they have to cover on their motorbike at the moment, a challenge in itself in Indian traffic, I can tell you. So far about what you have been able to follow on here on the blog.

In the meanwhile we are fully in the postproduction process for HUMANS, slowly editing through the material from Africa, bringing together one story at a time. At the same time we are working on a first little book about HUMANS that hopefully will be out in April and will give you not only a good visual impression of the people and their lives, but also tell some of their stories, all in a more habtic experience. I’ll share more with you as soon as we are able to talk about it in detail.

The next thing is a series of lectures and exhibitions that are planned in the next months. Right now two exhibitions are planned in Denmark and two in Germany and again as soon as it’s coming close I’ll share more with you. We are experimenting right now with different multimedia formats to give everyone the fullest experience.

And last, but maybe most important, the films: The process has been a bit slower than we thought, what mainly is due to other jobs, projects and the metioned preperations for the book, exhibitions, lectures and so on. So bare with me if it sometimes takes a bit longer. Our goal right now is to have till the summer around ten of the sixty films edited as well as some of the (interactive) stories.

Take care & be human!

Simon

© Emile Carlsen

While rich, spicy tea and sweet snacks are handed over the desks of busy streetkitchens the holy cows take a slow promenade in the middle of the road, not bothering the honking buzzing of the traffic, trusting that nobody would harm or trouble them. The cows are just as natural to the cityscape in India as the blessings and prayings are in temples. Many legends link the cow to the sacred, be it as the symbol of Krishna, the mother of India, the vehicle Nandi of Lord Shiva or even the embodiment of Shiva himself. Once a year in February or March, when the moon is waning making the night as dark as ever the Maha Shivaratri is celebrated, The Great Night of Shiva. So tonight the Hindus have a special reason to give the chapati leftovers to the cows after closing time.

© Emile Carlsen

In order to show devotion to the Lord people fast and pray all day untill midnight, not allowing themselves to eat or drink anything at all. Well, except from the bhang, the very special tea that contains cannabis. The purpose of drinking the euphoriant tea is to get closer to the divine. Opium has for centuries been a mean to celestial inspiration and enlightenment, and still today in some regions of India opium and more often cannabis is used as an ingredient in religious contexts.

© Emile Carlsen

All day there has been a bustle and jumble of people at one special point in the city of Mount Abu: in front of humble, little temple at the main street. Merely the size of a small shop, not as shimmering or glorious as other temples seen in the surroundings of the city, but through the whole day thousands of people stop to spend a few moments facing the temple in silent prayer.

© Emile Carlsen

The ceremony master, the pujari of the temple, is making religious offerings by ringing a bell, praying and singing while waving burning sandal incense around in the air. While people in and outside the temple stand handfolded, he pours a mix of milk, water and honey over the Shiva Lingam: the symbol of the eternal procreative germ of Shiva formed as a simple, upright figure. Numerous chains of marigold flowers covers the temple floor and the statue of Shiva. After half an hour of giving puja to the divine representations in the temple, another man turns to the people on the street carrying a plate of burning ghee, as they move closer together towards him, now opening their hands to hold it over the holy fire. Running a hand through their hair, they almost pour the holy smoke over their heads in order to receive the blessing.

© Emile Carlsen

Hindus of all kinds come to share a moment praying and keeping the mind in a state of onepointedness. It goes on for hours, and while beggars stand side by side with school boys, old couples and women in golden saris, the always present, never caring, four legged creature is still there in the middle of the road. Watching the Great Night of Shiva unfold through her calm eyes while chewing an old chapati.

Jean de Dieu has something what most of you might connect with but at the same time still might search for: He is working in a job that makes him happy and give him the feeling to follow his vocation.

Learn in this episode of HUMANS about his way to become a doctor, his influences and why he is so happy with where he is now. Introducing Jean de Dieu Ntwali:

His name is Amarkumar Ramchand Dholani and he has a mission.

© Emile Carlsen

For ten years he has been on the road, riding thousands and thousands of kilometers on his bike. Out of a good heart he travels his country with the sole purpose of increasing the awareness of HIV/AIDS in order to prevent spreading of the disease. He goes to villages and towns along the way to give teachings and information about how to recognize the disease and how to prevent it.

It takes him four years to travel the route: 40.000 kilometers through the 28 states of India from Kerala in south to Kashmir in north, from the vast deserts of Gujarat in west to the remote states far behind Bangladesh in east. He is now on his third trip through India, which means that within the last 10 years he has travelled around 100.000 kilometers.

© Emile Carlsen

Everything he owns is on the bicycle: clothes, blanket, pump and tools in a steel box attached to the side. On the tool box, stickers of Hindu Gods are plastered in peaceful union with a Christian crucifix. At the front the bike carries a basket, in which lies a bunch of thin papers in pink and green: flyers in Hindi and English with information about his mission. He lives by the mercy of people he meet, recieving what they choose to share with him: food, accomodation or a cup of chai.

We have neither food nor chai, so all we have to offer is a smile, and the promise that somewhere, far away in Europe people will read his story. And then just as he came: silent, smiling and determined he leaves towards the pale blue horizon.

© Emile Carlsen