Multimedia: The Cheese Man of Kashmir
I’ve been quiet lately for a few reasons. First—and most responsible for the lack of communication—is that I’ve been working frantically to redesign my entire blog site. It’s a brand-new theme that will eventually integrate with PhotoShelter. There are still a few bugs to work out, but I hope to go live this weekend. Hold your breath.
The second reason is that I’ve been deep into producing a large and complex multimedia presentation. You’ll find it below.
Chris and Kamala Zandee are incredible people. They live, as the saying goes, “simply so that others may simply live.” Their hearts are with the Gujjars—the shepherd people of Kashmir. These are a people close to my heart as well (you can visit my gallery to see more photos of them). In fact, in the region where this story takes place, the Gujjars call me their official photographer. Their words, not mine.
I met Chris and Kam years ago while I was still living in Kashmir. Even back then, they had a deep desire to give back and bless both the Kashmiri and Gujjar communities. Earlier this year, when I returned to Kashmir, I learned about the Zandees’ cheese factory. I’ll be honest—it sounded a little strange at first. But I decided to investigate. What I found was an incredible story—one that’s already making a real impact on people across the region.
I hope you enjoy this multimedia piece I’m calling “The Cheese Man.”
If reading the captions while listening to the narration feels too distracting, there’s an option to turn the captions off during playback. You can also view the images manually—just hit the “Advanced” button to stop the narration. One quick heads-up: if you enlarge the text in your browser, the media player doesn’t scale proportionally, and you might lose part of the image behind the player’s frame.
Finally, if you’d like to learn more about Chris and Kamala’s cheese business in Kashmir, visit their website: himalayancheese.com.
Interesting post and quite informative for me. I checked out their cheese website and now have a hankering for cheese and crackers. They live in a part of the world I've never visited so I checked out your gallery images. I was impressed by the photos of the Gujjars, they have striking eyes and a life most of us in the west can't imagine. Thanks for sharing.
Matt, it has been rather remarkable to watch your transformation over this year from still photographer to multimedia photojournalist. (Actually, more addition than transformation as you remain a great still photographer.) This easily could be a multimedia presentation on the New York Times site, and I hope that if you aren't already that you begin to market these multimedia slideshows so that a larger audience can enjoy them.
…speaking of a “larger audience,” I agree with Jeffrey. Let's add this one to the IGVP collection, Matt!
Even though we're not driving tons of traffic to the temp site, the official site will launch soon enough–and what a great visual story to make available to all interested in visual peacemaking and world peacemakers like Chris and Kamala!
Keep this up and you'll have to do workshops on this genre someday 😉
Agree with Jeffrey that your multimedia presentations are good and these people are just amazing! They really make me feel that there's hope for humanity after all 🙂
This is awesome. I remember when we visited there on the Lumen Dei trip very cool to see his business taking off and to see the locals moving in to help take it over.
Thank you all. It is a genre that I find very fulfilling. I guess because it combines by two favorite mediums, still and audio and adds a third; story telling.
Jeffrey, if you have connections with the NYT by all means pass on the URL! 😉
Mario, Fell free to use it. Let's talk over email.
Mitchell, there is hope.
That was excellent, very well done. It's always great to see people pushing the boundaries and trying to move into new territory – both Chris and Kamala with the cheese, and you with the move into multimedia storytelling.
I'll be very interested to see how you integrate this blog with Photoshelter, as it's on my to do list for January. My site already has the Graph Paper Press theme, I just need to set up the Photoshelter side of things.
An excellent interview is the foundation of this really well-done simple show. Usually, I never make it through a show that is over 3 minutes long, but the story-telling here is very engaging. Well done Matt!
Thanks you Craig & Gary. Yeah, it was a little long, That was a concern of mine going on to this. It was really hard to cut the audio back from 25 mins. This was a tough one.
Thanks you Craig & Gary. Yeah, it was a little long, That was a concern of mine going on to this. It was really hard to cut the audio back from 25 mins. This was a tough one.
wonderful. wonderful. wonderful.
hi awesome it takes a lots of sacrifice , and i salute u guys knowing ur labour in the lord is not in vain
thanks for doing this!!! good insights abt making cheese, alleviating the lifestyle of the locals & empowering them with a finer skill!!! Can't wait to sink my teeth into those cheese!!!