Junior Rose Shulman-Litwin says she uses photography to share her unique experiences with the world. She was one of the 12 upper schoolers that went on the Archer abroad trip to India over Thanksgiving break with the program Where There Be Dragons. 

“My entire thing, especially when I went to India, is showing people something that they wouldn’t see,” Shulman-Litwin said.

Prior to going on the trip, she researched information about India to get a sense of what was to come.

“When I searched for photos of India, they were all super one type. But, when I got there, it was completely different. All of my preconceived notions were incorrect,” she said.

Most of her favorite photographs were taken at the Nindor slum camp, an impoverished neighborhood about an hour away from Vatsalya, the school that Archer students stayed at during their trip.

“Once a week or pretty often, the school would have a health camp [at the Nindor slum camp] where we would clip the kid’s nails, and they would get medicine or get washed,” she said.

According to Shulman-Litwin, the Archer girls had time to engage with the people at the camp and develop relationships with them.

“A lot of my favorite photos are at this slum camp,” she said, “because the people were so willing to have their photo taken.”

Prior to arriving at the camp, Shulman-Litwin felt apprehensive because she knew it was going to be different from anything she had experienced before. However, she said the Archer girls’ trip to Nindor was not only completely new for them, but also for the locals there.

“This was one of their first times seeing foreigners,” she said. “It was definitely super weird for them.”

Although it was challenging at first, Archer girls and Nindor residents were able to communicate with one another in both Hindi and English.

“It was really, really sweet — they made a huge effort to talk to us. We learned some Hindi, so we were able to converse a little bit, and they knew a little bit of English, too,” Shulman-Litwin said.

Although Shulman-Litwin’s experience at the slum camp was positive, she does recall the poverty that she and the other Archer girls encountered. Upon seeing all of the suffering, she applied her own personal motto to the situation.

“One of my biggest themes in my art is finding beauty in darkness. In India, it’s finding beauty in poverty. The beauty in the poverty is that there is hope,” she said.

Click below to view some of the photographs Rose took while on her Archer Abroad trip to India.