What People Are Saying

 

I have had your wonderful book for a while now, and its effects are still washing over me. I pick it up after leaving it on the shelf for a while. I pick it up when it calls me. In my lap, turning the pages in a slow cadence…my eye scans the images in succession down the page. I feel very full..almost overwhelmed by the diversity and beauty of the shapes, colors, faces…and my mind gets very still, if I can stay present with it all. It is a very sweet experience to get the gift of your book in this way. I sense that this is the mystery of the book …what you wanted to evoke in the “reader.” Your intention was just this. The book has worked its magic on me again! I allow an experience to unfold as my eye travels from one image to the next…my imagination fills the spaces in between those images. I am on a journey now…Often I feel the fullness before I reach the “end” of the book. But like a string of mala beads…does this book really begin and end? Does it really matter that I start at the “beginning?” 1008 greets me in whatever manner I choose to view it. It is a delight…and a sparkle in the eye of its creator! Namaste.
~ Gordon Hopkins, Creater of Rare Books Inc.

 

…I could go on and on. It is a stunning work- YES it could be an epic film in full surround, Yes I would love to see your images huge!…. YES I would love to know just one page of what you have seen in India. Your love and respect and intimacy with the place, people and culture are so evident. I feel like I am walking as a ghost – unseen but welcome to witness these senses, people and places. I will never know India like you do- most people never will – but with your astounding work- myself and all viewers can come to know India in a way that may not exist in the next 100 years. I have the greatest respect for Catherine Jansen’s work- this is a gift for all time.
~ Elizabeth Murray, author or Monet’Passions and Living Life in Full Bloom

 

When I looked at the book, I was fully immersed in the experience, feeling as though I had experienced a multitude of lifetimes. Her ability to express both the terrible and the sublime in the same image reflect some of my own experience of powerful India.
~ Martha Madigan, Chairman of Graduate Photo Program, Temple U

 

Well last night sometime south of 2 am I started down your book…It is astounding!
Not being one who often follows instructions, I only scanned the introduction you asked me to read first…Now I have, I’m still astounded, maybe more so. …..The photographs are so rich, complex and vibrant. I didn’t realize that they were stitched…somehow that multiplies the cornucopia of them…much like India and the way it spews out. They are damn good pictures constructed or not…are you mad woman?! The hours on the computer!
Besides the open beauty of the images and the way they repeat and interact with their page mates and the sequence thru the river of the book,I think for me the most amazing thing is in all those images I did not get a whiff of irony, sarcasm or wit! The unexpected and raw contradictions of India, the delight and horror are in some way neutralized in your work…not draining them of power but rather their fear, their opposition. Your spiritual practice has clearly opened you in a remarkable way……//Well you have brought much joy and grace into the world with your pictures.
~ Linda Connar, Fine Art Photographer, Odyssey, The Photographs of Linda Connar

 

Being present to the daily kaleidoscope of an extraordinary culture, combining it with a sensitive and heartfelt eye and putting the pieces together seamlessly, make Catherine Jansen’s book,1008, a stunning work. In 1008 photographs we are transported directly to the inner core of India, honoring all that Jansen points her camera at. From magical mornings on the Ganges, to remote country villages, to the poorest of the poor and more, her photographs reveal an underlying dignity and visceral experience. 1008 is a visual masterpiece.
~ David Winston, Haines Philanthropic Foundation Grant recipient

 

Wow, talking about transporting.
I cannot imagine what personal courage it took to be in those environments. Some of those images make Hieronymous Bosch look like Walt Disney. I found the collective weight of them to be such a magical combination of terror and tenderness. What a gift (for Catherine to have created them and for you to have shared them with me.)
It’s really interesting how they put into my face my own fear of difference and how they persist in the temptation to get over it using the bridge of her beautiful portrayal of a world I had not imagined and, certainly, would never visit, but am forced to recognize as familiar in it’s quintessential humanity. To be sitting here this morning in Atlanta, cozy in my arm chair with the warmth of the laptop beneath my wrists— realizing that my relatives (some infants, some without fingers, some encircled with cobras) are breathing, their eyes moving in air laden with the aromas of poverty— it’s a stunning, stunning experience to which I’ve awaken today.
~ Linda Griffith, Fine Art Photographer, Co-founder , Artistic Director Wilmer Theatre

 

The images are magical, reflecting the magical reality as well as the humanity of India. A feast for eyes, mind and heart.
~ Doctor David Nalin, Humanitarian, Art Collector, Creator of ORT, Cholera Treatment

 

This book overflows with magic…. Your eye is drawn deep into world after world that anoints all that it comes in contact with… This is India where few outsiders are comfortable or welcome to enter. Catherine Jensen makes her own pilgrimage annually ,photographing all that she encounters….here she generously shares her relentless grace, unflinching eye and brilliant talent.
~ Anice Jacoby, Event Innovator and author of Street Art San Francisco, Mission Muraliso

 

Oh Eternal Mother, what you are doing is even beyond grieving…it is somehow forgiving the world for being the way it is…and so many other things as well…
~ Helene Rysekey, Fine Art Critic, writer