For my Fulbright project, Photographing Imagined Landscapes: The Switzerland of India, I am visiting the northern hill stations of India from Darjeeling to Dalhousie and others in between, all of which lay claim to the landscape of “the Switzerland of India.” I am fascinated by what has happened in this particular region; through tourism, marketing and, in particular, Bollywood filmmaking, another landscape (the Swiss Alps) has been imagined throughout the northern Indian landscape, and in its place an imitation of an imitation has been constructed. I am photographing the cultural confluence of this region at the daybreak of the Indian middle class tourist industry.
— Christine Rogers, Northern India
