A year after his bar mitzvah Michael Bühler-Rose became a gaudiya vaishanava, or member of the Hare Krishna movement. He subsequently traveled all over the world, and stayed for some years in India. With Hare Krishna he offers a portrait of his co-religionists in the Indian state of West Bengal, where the roots and the headquarters of the movement are found. Constructing the Exotic uses the conventions of colonial photography and painting. Western women who grew up in an Indian context are placed in familiar Western landscapes, which raises the question of what we are to understand as ‘exotic’. Both series are printed in large format, to invite the viewer to reflection on the mixing of cultural identities.
