Documenting change : a two tone saga

Change has always accompanied the march of human history throughout the world. Documenting these for posterity has also been a serious enterprise undertaken by a few through the medium of diaries, commemorative notes and illustrations.
 

Thanks to a tribe of intrepid documentary photographers from around the world, we are aware of various peoples, places and traditions of that period in India as left behind in their simple but striking catalog of pictures.

Today, as we transit into the digital age with all its rapid changes, a similar concern overtakes us as we see old ways of life and customs undergoing speedy transformations, particularly in rural India where our properties are located. While we are powerless to stem the flow of this tide of change, we are overtaken with the urge to capture this period in telling portraits before it vanishes into the yawning jaws of time for ever.

In this endeavor we have been inspired by this band of roving record keepers – a motley group of civil servants, adventurers and savants – who kept diaries and took photographs to record the movement of time, serving as curators of rare historical events in an era and country undergoing great change.

In a further tribute to this rare period of historical documentation, we have also borrowed the tools and techniques of its practitioners – mechanical cameras using film and subjects treated with understanding and appreciation. It is this forgotten art of documentation – slow and methodical yet deeply interactive and respectful of its subjects - that we seek to bring to life again to record the transition of time around our destinations, capturing its peoples, nature, architecture and culture for posterity.​