Street Portraits in India with @pruue To see more of...

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Street Portraits in India with @pruue

To see more of Sean’s portraits from India and moments from his other travels, follow @pruue on Instagram.

After pausing to reflect on his busy life as an engineer, Singaporean Instagrammer Sean Gabriel (@pruue) realized he needed to get away.

"Living in Singapore, everything appears to be very rigid and extremely fast paced," Sean explains. "We had to take a step back, slow down a little and immerse ourselves in an entirely different culture that would be refreshing and inspiring."

In September, he joined his girlfriend and her family on a pilgrimage to India, where they sought out Vrindavan, the town where the Hindu god Krishna is believed to have spent his childhood. A sacred site with hundreds of temples, Sean recalls that “bells from the temples would ring as early as 4am.”

Having put aside a passion for graphic design to pursue a career in engineering, the trip offered a chance for Sean to reconnect with his creative interests. He found himself drawn to the people who surrounded him and sought to tell the story of his trip through portraits—even though, as strangers, they shared neither a common background nor much common language.

As he found out, his phone and a smile was all the language he needed:

"One memorable instance was a picture I took of a rickshaw rider. He immediately stood up and started gesturing me to take a picture of him whilst I was wandering around the temple. He then carried on to wrap his head with a towel that most rickshaw riders would normally wipe their seats with, in a bid to pose as character from Bollywood. At that point in time he believed he was a star, and so did I. The camera, it seems, was the catalyst that broke down the language barriers we had.”

by via Instagram Blog