A Passing Face

One Morning in Delhi…

Random encounters, with heritage Delhi as a backdrop, are glimpses of life stories told by the instinctive lens

Rohit Chawla | 03 May, 2018

“Every city, every country, is an education of sorts that stays with me longer than anything I will ever learn in a classroom. India has been more of everything,” says David Lagane, 24, student of International management, Perpignan, France (Photographed at Red Fort)

This is a dilemma as old as the reflected glories in a photograph: Does the photographer follow the instinct of the camera or does the camera follow the instinct of the photographer? The provenance of the images—on these pages or elsewhere—that you are looking at can be traced to this struggle behind the lens. On the morning of May 1st, I was the photographer in search of the amateur accessorised by a camera, the kind of traveller who chooses to record his experience not in memory but on a memory card. My random encounters, with heritage Delhi as a backdrop, are glimpses of life stories told by the instinctive lens. Or by the traveller? The visual tension of the dilemma remains.