INDIA ROSES – BEAUTY AND MISERY

I went to India when the fascination that had seduced so many of my friends in the seventies was exhausted. I have traveled the length and breadth of the subcontinent not to escape or escape the limited and materialistic Western world; through the camera I was looking for existences and new faces with simplicity. In India we cannot ignore the aspects of the totalizing mysticism that pervades everyday reality and which concerns women a lot. My friend Terenzio Rosati had told me about the importance of the myth of Devi, the Great Mother. I had set out to be able to communicate, with one shot after another, the sensations that involved me in that characteristic circular flow of India. I imagined women as goddesses, as they were represented in commercials, movie posters and temples. The reality, however, was more complex: opposed to the Hindu current of Saktism, where women and men concur to achieve the harmony of the universe, there were violent episodes such as “fire killings”, the rapes of women who transgressed the traditions and practice of Devadasi, or the sacred prostitution of girls. I found myself faced with an enigma: why are Indian women not opposed to a millennial patriarchal culture that has now become puritanical? The Hindu religion like any other thought and doctrine that neglects the erotic aspect of life or even suppresses the sacred value of the feminine can only lead to our decline. Even today a censorship is underway which tends to falsify reality; photography can do a lot to achieve truth and purity.