In 2005, photographer Rohit Chawla was travelling through the Kutch region of Gujarat—a trip that gave birth to one of Chawla’s photographic series, one which he calls his “strongest fashion images”. The project, titled ‘Wanderlust’, now on view at Delhi’s Bikaner House, brings a series of striking portraits in muted colours featuring the Rabari community of Kutch, a nomadic pastoral community from northwestern India whose traditions, attire, and way of life are slowly disappearing.
Chawla’s fascination with the community began over 30 years ago when he was there first with Japanese designer Issey Miyake, drawn to their flamboyant lifestyle. “I loved their sense of natural fashion and style, which has inspired countless designers across the world,” he says.
Chawla loves to travel; he describes it as his “whole phd in education”—something that has guided his creative instincts and sensibility as a lensman, drawing from the design minimalism of the Nordic north. “Travelling is also my biggest source of inspiration. I’ve learned more from the Harvey Nichols shop windows and displays in London than from most contemporary art and design biennales. True art manifests itself in unexpected places, not just in formal museum spaces,” says Chawla.
The Rabari way of life
The Rabaris, whose name derives from the Persian word Rahabari, meaning “outsider,” were once itinerant pastoralists. Today, Chawla says, many are becoming more stationary, and younger generations are moving away from traditional livelihoods. “You realise how little you really need to live,” Chawla speaks of his observation from his interactions with the community.
The portraits highlight the intricate artistry of Rabari life: women in embroidered blouses and skirts, stacked bangles, mirror necklaces, and hand tattoos mostly in black and the men in simple white short cropped silhouettes, often carrying sticks or lambs as their personal accessory to boot. “Even in simplicity, there’s artistry. Their fashion comes out of centuries of tradition, not design school. Designers look at the Rabaris’ silhouettes and patterns and draw inspiration, but here it is in its authentic context,” he adds.
His images are rendered in desaturated tones, almost black and white—a choice Chawla made deliberately. “The desaturated palette suited the desert. Black and white has a purity, which I find very poetic,” he says.
Chawla staged his photos carefully, yet organically, during his trips into the desert. “I too was moving constantly in the desert in a jeep in search of where they lived. I always carried a white piece of fabric as a backdrop of sorts and my lights and reflectors. I also used a Polaroid camera, so after taking a photograph, I could give them something tangible and real as a permanent memory and record of sorts,” he explains. In an era before photography was massified, the tangible Polaroid’s images held immense novelty value for the nomadic subjects, who previously had to travel to villages or melas to have a photograph made.
Gazing into the camera
Art critic Kishore Singh has described ‘Wanderlust’ as “documentative without being ethnographic, intimate without being exotic”. He avoids clichéd or voyeuristic portrayals of communities: “I’m not shooting them in their huts and related exotica which Western media has long fetishised. These are simple people portraits in essence and I wanted to keep the images as pure as possible.”
A defining feature of the photographs is the Rabaris’ direct gaze into the camera. Chawla devised a simple yet effective method: subjects would keep their eyes closed while he set up his lights, then open them for a brief instant when the shot was ready. “This sheer act gave them fierceness and directness. I wanted to express the intent and concentration needed to create the projection fashion imagery thrives on,” he says.
Chawla’s past in advertising and fashion photography informs this sensibility. Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he worked with designers like Rohit Bal and Rohit Khosla, but eventually moved away from advertising to find his voice through editorial and fine art photography. “Photography for me is about a fresh language that has a sense of visual wonder and dollops of your own inner self too,” he says.
Though ‘Wanderlust’ was photographed over 20 years ago, its themes remain urgent. The exhibition, also showcased in Paris, as part of a Festival of India in 2023 has returned to Delhi thanks to gallerist Sunaina Anand of Art Alive, who felt the images deserved a wider audience—a spotlight on a community at risk of being forgotten. Chawla adds, “I’m thinking of going back to the same Kutch area and hopefully finding the little boys and the same subjects again to see how they have grown up into men and women and in trying to retrace the image, photographing them all over again to see how much has changed and what had remained.”
On view at the Main Art Gallery, Bikaner House, Pandara Road, till October 29 from 11 am to 6 pm
