images from rural india

this is the project i am currently working on. my objective for this series is to bring the beauty and simplicity of village life as it exists today. this is not a journalistic or documentative project but the idea is to create images that capture the calmness and austerity framed in aesthetic compositions.


many years back as a young child i used to spend summers in my grandmother’s village near Itawa, UP, with my close cousin. those fond memories come to me once in a while, although i cant go back to find them again now. firstly my family doesnt live there anymore, secondly, the village doesnt look like how i remember it, im told. that created a craving to find those images, as held in my memory. in current times, the general impression is “villages are no longer the way they used to be”. well, it might be true in many ways, but i can say they are still like before in many ways, at least relative to the current day cities. one clear difference is that only the very poor in villages now live the way any one would live 20 years back in a village. that makes
the beauty in simplicity more elusive, as now it is tainted with extreme poverty. for this series i have tried hard to refrain from capturing the sadness of poor or dirty, and have put a deliberate effort in focusing on the positives of village life. i want to share the joy and not the drama or shock.

the images in this series have been made in villages of MP, Rajasthan, Punjab, Tamilnadu, Kashmir and Karnataka, over a period of last 4 years.

here are the reasons i chose to photograph rural india

* simplicity

* beauty and joy of nature

* living close to nature, nature at a larger scale than human

* my fascination with ancient and human past. villages provide a glimpse of how our ancestors would have lived

* art is not a possession of urban, rich, educated or fashionable. village people live with art day to day with their meager means

* for the sake of art. to focus on beauty, order and grace in places that are written off as poverty stricken, dirty and mundane

* there is such a big chasm between urban and rural life, its like a different world. images provide a glimpse to those who never have had any exposure to rural life, or to those who remember it with nostalgia

* the scarcity in villages give a perspective on human life in general with respect to our lives of abundance in cities. bringing the images from rural life to our lives in cities, creates a juxtaposition which can keep the viewer a bit grounded, may be.

* images from the villages have a slowing down effect on mind which is otherwise in a constant state of “go-get-whats-next”