BORDERS: A 12 Month Exploration of Space and Consciousness

“BORDERS: A 12 Month Exploration of Space and Consciousness” is a visual exercise in seeing. Photographed over a 12 month period in the northern Arizona bioregion using an iPhone X and its native camera app, BORDERS explores the boundaries between reality and imagination and the bio-psychological nuances of perception. BORDERS premiered at the Rishikesh International Film Festival in May 2021 and won Best Concept Short Film.

Watch the online Q&A between myself and Deja Cross, Founder and Creative Director of the Rishikesh International Film Festival, where I discuss my impetus for the entire P A R A series and BORDERS and my process of seeing.

The Meditative Eye: An Exploration of Seeing From Within

Join Sejal Saraiya and Marc Barakah in a spirited conversation on how their meditation practice has influenced their creative visual expression through still and motion pictures.

Photography and film are the interplay of light and physical objects in the three-dimensional world as seen through the visual experience and interpretation of the photographer and filmmaker. Yet, all seeing takes place within the brain, not outside of us.

So, how does the experience of meditation, which is essentially an internal experience, influence our externalized seeing and become expressed in still and moving images?

Sej and Marc, friends and artistic collaborators since the first Rishikesh Film Festival in 2017 come from very different sociocultural backgrounds, are of different generations and have had different meditation practices, yet find commonality and distinct differences in how meditation has influenced their seeing in life and creative pursuits.

In this interactive conversation and audience Q&A, Sej and Marc explore how meditation has influenced their life and literal and abstract photography and film. This is a fun and lively conversation that looks deeply into the heart of meditative practice from a visual artist’s point of view.

Sej has been meditating for 12 years, since the age of 23, and has been a photographer since she was 10 years old. Marc has been meditating for more than 50 years, since the age of 15 and has been a photographer since he was in the 5th or 6th grade and a filmmaker since he was about 20 years old.