I am a tirelessly curious world wanderer and a travel/documentary photographer. My main passion lies in capturing disappearing ancient cultures and the human condition in unique, challenging situations.

My range of subjects is fairly broad, but whether I am photographing nomadic shepherds in India, life in the last traditional villages of Eastern Europe or sulfur miners working in a volcanic crater, my common aim is always the same - to capture the human element.

I freelance and shoot documentary photo stories on the above mentioned topics. Much of my travel/documentary photography is represented by Getty Images, while my cultural portraits, both colour and black and white are in the private collections of photo lovers and collectors worldwide.

This website should provide a general idea of what I do. For a more extensive collection of my images - check out my ARCHIVES ON PBASE.

Once or twice a year I will be running photography workshops in some of the most photogenic locations around the world. Click the ‘LEARN’ button for more information or keep yourself updated on what I’m up to in general on my ‘BLOG’.

Prints of my work can be purchased through the ‘PRINTS’ section.

email: mitchell@mitchellkphotos.com
mobile: +612403038684
 

 

 

 

 
For countless generations they have moved with the seasons, around the desert and through the plains, searching for green pastures, up-keeping an age old tradition, their way of life as wandering cattle herders.

After years of enduring the merciless summer sun, sandstorms and chilly winter winds, their chiseled faces become a testament to their lifestyle. The leathery, wrinkled skin of the elders, the wind burnt cheeks of women and children, the intense, heavy gazing eyes which have seen more than their share of adversity, these are the imprints so unmistakably theirs.

It is a surreal sight when the savvy wanderers emerge on the barren horizon, their large turbans, striking costumes, mystical tattoos and glimmering jewelry evoke imagery from a fairytale of far away lands and exotic people.

The cattle herding wanderers are "Rabari", an ancient tribe whose origins are shrouded in myth and mystery. Fearless and fiercely proud of their culture, resistant to the ways of the modern world, they have journeyed around what today is West India (Gujarat and Rajastan) for almost a thousand years.

But the Rabari are a dissaprearing kind. Despite their resistance to change, modernization and necessity speak louder than pride. The old generations will live out their lives just as their ancestors did, but the young are being driven away from their millennia old way of life. It is likely that in a few decades, the current rate of development and the direction of social trends will render the Rabari unrecognizable to themselves.

This project is a visual journey into those few pockets of West India where time seems to have stood still, the areas forgotten by "progress of modernization". It is a trip into the personal realm of the last of the Rabari.