As a teenager, Rohit Chawla had access to little that could pass for entertainment. So he would read to pass the time. The renowned photographer recalls trekking for miles to the Delhi Public Library to pick cherished books, often re-reading his favourites.
“I slept with Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer under my pillow for days because I loved the writing. It was so candid and really made an impression,” he says. Its outré sexual content had made this particular book the subject of major controversy around the world. Perhaps inadvertently, that was when the idea of documenting banned books as art first entered Chawla’s mind.
This germ of an idea grew over the years and has now resulted in his ongoing exhibition Banned: Book Covers Re-imagined. Curated by Alka Pandey, it’s currently on display at Stir gallery/Vis A Vis India in Delhi’s Chhatarpur Farms. Though currently a 30-piece exhibit, plans are afoot for a larger presentation of over 50 works that will travel the world. It is the perfect marriage of Chawla’s skills and his desire to create thought-provoking works of art.
Chawla has decades of experience in the ad industry and news publications. Describing his style of photography as conceptual instead of documentation, he turned to book covers for this exhibit because he felt that their potential to connect with the audience was far greater than that of a magazine or other publication. “Reading is central to who I am as a person and as an artist, and banned books in particular have always had a certain draw for me,” Chawla declares in his artist note. “In this series, I reinterpret 30 iconic covers of books that were at one time or another considered a threat and removed from public access.” The result is a vivid reimagination of the original book covers.
Unlike its original avant garde iteration, the Delhi-based Chawla’s Tropic of Cancer displays a distinct tropical vibe with a naked woman bathing in an exotic swimming pool—which the artist points out is shot in his house in Goa. For the graphic novel Persepolis set in a changing Iran, the protagonist is shown covered in long swathes of hair from head to toe, sitting in a submissive pose. George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm places its main character—the authoritarian pig—in a military uniform amidst a sea of soldiers. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird takes a literal route by depicting the bird placed on a deathly noose. And Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses places the author himself on the cover with one half of his spectacles shown in darkened glass in deference to the injuries he sustained after a violent attack.
Each book consists of a three-dimensional wooden box where the cover image rests on one end and text explaining the plot and the fraught history of the book is shown on the other. All 30 books are displayed on a wood-and-steel frame bookshelf with a stark yellow cross repeatedly declaring the word ‘Banned’ covering it. The images on the covers are a mixture of Chawla’s archival photos, AI, illustrations and woodcuts. Each of the books Chawla chose has a personal connection to him, having resonated with him at varying points in his life. And each of them was banned by some authoritarian figure or organisation.
“I don’t believe in creating ornamental or decorative art,” says the artist. “The greatest classics of our time were viewed suspiciously by authorities. But to read is to know, and knowledge is power; so it is almost always literature that reflects society’s ills back at it, books that subvert mainstream doctrines, and those that challenge or critique authority that come under the scanner.”
In the present day scenario, Chawla worries about ‘wokeism’ and the global cancel culture that is so intolerant of creativity. He summarises, “This exhibit is my way of saying the unsaid in an oblique subtle way. Because there is nothing else left to say.”