Ram Chandra Murphy

Ram Chandra Murphy has been capturing images of India since the mid-1990’s. “India is a place that’s always moving. With photography, you’re trying to freeze time and India is a place that is always moving. That’s part of the fun of it.”

Ram Chandra Murphy was born and raised in San Francisco, CA to an Irish immigrant father and an Indian mother. He was raised with deference to both cultures. He started photographing when a family friend gave him an Argus C-3 in 1968. Several cameras, printers and trips to India later, this show was conceived as a joint effort with Kendahl Jan Jubb. Murphy has been Kendahl’s personal photographer for over 30 years. He graduated from SF State with a degree in Microbiology. He taught one year at UM with the Round River program in the early ’70’s. His photographs have appeared in publications and private collections throughout the West. He enjoys an immense family in North India.

“The beautiful thing about photography, says Murphy, you get to see India through the eyes of someone that loves it, but is still amazed by it. I don’t just want one picture that says it all; I want pictures to be part of the entire culture.”

The second most populous nation in the world, India seems so vast with over a billion people. So many people, so much nature and so much culture. Sacred cows in the steets, cows walking in open doors, community rituals, venerable ceremonies, Hindu cultural rites-of-passage: Rom has managed to capture both the wisdom and antiquity of the Indian experience. “People in India love to have their picture taken. They love their antiquity, their history (they invented chess, originally developed the studies of algebra, trigonometry and calculus.)” India comprising 25 states and 7 Union Territories, is vast, vivacious and mysterious as the TajMahal, elusive leopards, wading water buffaloes, lethargic cows meandering amongst the people and hectic construction zones looking like bombed out wastelands.”