Indian Visions by Katarina Baliova

"Indian Visions" is a selection of images from project "People of Mumbai" taken during travels in Mumbai, India.

"People of Mumbai" captures the reality of people’s lives,incorporating the harsh and unspoken beauty of their surroundings.These images reveal kindness and dreamy mysteries of everydayexistence, within the colourful settlings, vibrant surfaces and painted hues.

Throughout my explorations of the streets of Mumbai I discoveredgenerosity, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, truth,compassion, faith - and the very definition of the word "happiness".

My conclusions arise that this all has little to share with our current western idea of happiness. It speaks mainly of achieving a state of mind, an idea that happiness is measured on the joy of serenity and the core values of society.

This type of happiness is in direct opposition to the striving for the excessive and the unreachable and the consumption of "things" that western civilisation seems built on - which by their nature are unable to bring satisfaction, and collapsed because the same consumption culture.

Perhaps the Indian world, brings a happiness through the calm consciousness of self, which is also full of life and joy, that in many facets perhaps we in the west have unlearned to appreciate.

Katarina Baliova

Katarina Baliova, photographer, born in Slovakia, 1982 currently working in London.

Katarina was an establishing member of group of experimental artists called “CREATIVE”, and participated in multiple exhibitions around Holland and Slovakia, producing an award winning documentary on “Verbal and Non-verbal Communication”Later she travelled and lived in Australia and studied Life Drawing under Dr.David Briggs at Julian Ashton School of Drawing, Sydney. During her stay in Australia she assisted fashion photographers and cooperated on creative projects in the entertainment industry, in particular the Sydney Dance Company. In 2005 she moved toLondon and successfully completed BA Hons Art and Design, specialising in Photography (film and digital).Katarina has worked with and cooperated with numerous leading photographers on various projects for the likes of: Sony (UK), Esquire Magazine (UK), Vanity Fair (UK), Tatler Magazine (UK), Pekne Byvanie (SVK), Markiza Magazine (SVK).

Katarina has also collaborated with London photographic galleries and assisting leading London-based international fashion photographers specialising in portraiture. She closely follows the contemporary scene of art and participates in various contemporary photography projects and exhibitions in London.

Her current aspirations are centred on surrealistic explorations of portraiture and forms (landscape, body, and shapes) with a creative focus on the sensitivity of light and its interaction with surfaces across subject matters. Her recent projects have focused on studying identity through portrait photography, with an emphasis on exploring various approaches to capturing personality through narrative.