For over thirty years Harry Gruyaert has criss-crossed the Indian peninsula. For the first time, this book brings together around 150 photographs, most of them previously unpublished, that tell the story of an India that is both timeless and modern. These images bear witness to the photographer’s singularity: his interest in narrative, public space and unexpected scenes. Gruyaert says he needs to travel to feel the world and express it in images. From Gujarat to Kerala, he has captured a certain quintessence of this country of many legends. Streets teeming with activity in New Delhi or Calcutta, modest villages in Tamil Nadu or Rajasthan, ghats in the great religious cities of Benares or Varanasi… Women in saffron and purple saris thresh grain, dyers work in steaming vats, a nomadic herders’ encampment is organized in the twilight… The air is saturated with color, light, noise, and sometimes silence too. “Color must be paramount”, says Gruyaert, restoring an emotional perception and providing a graphic vision of the world. Atmospheres with subtle chromatic variations paint a picture of contrasts and the opposite of exoticism. 

Far from stereotypes, these images show the plurality of India over the years and the country’s political events. “Making a photo is both seeking contact and refusing it, being at the same time the most there and the least there,” says the photographer. It’s a question of bringing out the wonder, of capturing what characterizes the place. The search for density in the frame makes photography a physical experience. An experience that is particularly embodied here, in this multi-sensory journey to India.