In the mid-twentieth century when color film became widely available, India attracted photographers from all over the world. Even the amateur tourist returned from India and impressed his friends and family with the color pictures he had taken in what was then seen as an "exotic" country. Kodachrome, with its deep saturated dyes, seemed to have been invented for photographing India. It was impossible to take a dull picture in this colorful land.
Even though serious poverty persists in India and hundreds of millions of children suffer from malnutrition, the country has made significant progress in the last decade, and progress brings change in lifestyles of people. But some essential things about a culture, as ancient and deep-rooted as India's, don't change so fast or so easily. The continuing predominance of color in the Indian scene cannot be overstated. There is nothing subtle about it. The most ordinary activities of daily life, not to mention sacred ceremonies and celebrations, are dressed in bright reds, yellows, greens. Color acts as the running thread in the selection of my India images of the last three decades that comprise this volume.