During the past fourteen years, Prabir Purkayastha has journeyed endlessly through the wilderness of Ladakh, which lies at the northern tip of India, and captured powerful images of the last bastion of ancient Tibetan culture. The powerful images of the landscape, sometimes juxtaposed with the people, are passionately crafted and speak volumes of a magical way of life which has changed little through the centuries. It is this age-old tapestry that Purkayastha reverently reveals in his collection of works on display at Bodhi Art.

Purkayastha evocatively frames a meditative study of a Ladakh that he loves and continually tries to understand. “Ladakh connects with me at a very emotional and spiritual level. I can spend a lifetime in there,” says the artist. In this collection, his photography occupies the interstitial space between documentation and the more expressive, imaginative arts. Though some landscapes seem to be from another world, they hold the tangible warmth of human presences: the people themselves often seem inseparable from the shadows and topography that frames them. Eminently theatrical, the air heavy with anticipation, each image, imbued with an air of spiritual rooted-ness and ancient wisdom, appears to hold a secret waiting to be discovered.

Ladakh took almost a decade to photograph. This primitive land of wind-swept plateau and snow-scarred deserts is spread across the towering citadels of the Great Himalayan and Karakoram ranges. Countless visits – throughout all the seasons – and endless days of traveling across the length and breadth of the land covering thousands of kilometers on foot, jeeps, trucks and horsebacks help create the pictures. The collection of works gently erases your sense of time and self, and you become one with this pilgrim as Purkayastha travels through this enchanted land.

In total, there are 45 photos on display of which 25 are new images which were not a part of the Bombay show. “Photography in India has matured to a level where, the marriage of evolved aesthetic sensibilities and the informed use of advanced technology gives us photographic prints that rightfully occupy the strata of any conventional art form. We are keen to push photography as a good and affordable investment for budding art collectors in the United States,” says Karen Stone Talwar, Gallery Director, Bodhi Art, New York.