“White Buddha” by iPhone-shoot is licensed under CC BY 2.0
California based Photojournalist David Butow has worked in exotic locales as Burma, China, Yemen, Afghanistan, Peru and others to capture Buddhism Culture.
David Butow has covered major events such as Japan’s 2011 tsunami and China’s huge earthquake in 2008, as well as social problems occurring in the US. His work has received several awards from American Photography Annual, World Press Photo and Photo District News, among others.
Butow’s recent work has been an exploration of the parallels between his work and some of the concepts of Buddhism that he has been studying, like compassion and empathy, as well as awareness of the present. He says that his objective was to capture the practice of Buddhism in places where it enjoyed religious dominance and where it had gotten its start. He wanted to “show how Buddhist concepts are reflected in the visual aesthetics of those cultures;” while also forming a link connecting his interpretation of certain Buddhist ideas, the process of capturing the images and the subjective experiences of those included in them.
https://twitter.com/HCBSS/status/566068907799097344
In his quest to capture inspired reflections of various Buddhist practices and the aesthetic aspects of them, David Butow visited nearly a dozen countries where Buddhism is practiced predominantly. His mission was to capture images that satisfied his desire to leave viewers with impressions of his emotional, intellectual and visual understanding of Buddhism. The series reveals the broad swath of individuals seeking transcendent experiences and ties them together through Butow’s unique perspective.
Butow has had his work exhibited in several venues, including the Asia Society and the United Nations. He has delivered guest lectures for several institutions, including the Otis College of Art and Design, the Brooke Institute and the Annenberg Space for Photography; he is also a member of Redux Pictures.
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