RAIN DOGS
A photographic tribute by Rohit Chawla
Rohit Chawla is one of India's leading contemporary photographers. He spent close to two decades in advertising at JWT as the national film chief and creative director before moving out to start his own design and film production company.
His various solo exhibitions include ‘Wanderlust', ‘Tribute to Raja Ravi Varma', ‘Klimt – The Sequel', ‘Free da! – The Homage', ‘World of Wearable Art', ‘Goa Style & The Inspired Frame', ‘Artist – Unboxed', ‘The Quiet Portrait', ‘Untangling the Politics of Hair' and the ‘Banned Books' exhibition in 2024.
In his editorial avatar as the erstwhile creative director for the India Today Group and Open magazine, he conceptualized and photographed over 400 magazine covers.
His most recent photographic work won India its first everIndustry Craft Gold Lion at Cannes in 2023, besides winning the Grand Prix at Spikes Asia for design in 2024 and another Grand Prix at the Abbies also in 2024.
Rohit is the visiting industry dean for photography at AAFT University. A culinary aesthete, he enjoys food photography and has done three foodbooks: The Indian Accent Cookbook, The Fine Art of Food and The Bangla Table from Chettinad.
Rohit's photographic work is part of private collections and museums the world over. He divides his time between Goa and Delhi and continues his editorial and advertising practice.
2021 : While everyone was retreating behind shut doors to escape the Pandemic, I sought refuge under the monsoon skies of Goa.
I’d been photographing people for 40 years and travelling was the only constant I knew. So when the Lockdown was first announced, I coaxed the erstwhile Hotel La Amore at Ashwem beach to open up a sea-facing room for me, which they did, on the understanding that I would fend for myself. With that room as a base, I began walking the beach to stay fit, 20km a day, those stray dogs following me, hoping perhaps that I was the harbinger of manna from heaven, for on earth they’d been left with nothing – the tourists had fled, the beaches were no longer a moveable feast of leftovers. It broke my heart to see them emaciated, eyes large and dead with hunger. In all our own scrambling for food those days, some hoarding away more than they needed, those homeless, helpless dogs had been completely forgotten.
More than turning a pack of neglected dogs into a photographer’s subject, I was trying to form a frame around my own vulnerability. Thus these images are the quietest, most introspective work I’ve done.
Beyond choosing the time of day, the quality of light - nothing was ever in my control. Unlike my human subjects I couldn’t manipulate or coax the dogs to do my bidding, couldn’t predict the moods of the monsoon or the sea’s erratic behaviour. The relentless rain took a toll on my cameras. But those magical clouds, that endless expanse of water, the shimmering dance of light created a vast ethereal studio where every morning the sea cast a fresh set of surrealistic props at high tide.
I often wondered whether those dogs were also able to sense that I needed rescuing as much as they did. Could they have been aware that, howsoever broken their lives, they were in a strange way restoring mine? As if they knew I needed to remember, they reminded me that love is a simple thing, lost to us at times on account of too much reflection, too much analysis, too much questioning as to where our lives are going.
It was three years after I had taken these images that I looked at them and found to my surprise that they told a story bigger than I had intended. In some ways it’s a deeply political story, and I share these images with the thought that that story might resonate with others who, in one way or another, may have been where I was.
Rohit Chawla