Rohit Chawla’s new exhibition showcases 70 design-led photographs

Twenty months after the pandemic forced him to pause his mid-career retrospective, photographer Rohit Chawla pulls out all the stops with an exhibition that merges art, design and portraiture

“I can’t get carried away by the banality of documenting the everyday. The digital paradigm is increasingly about the staged image that a professional photographer creates from scratch, much like an artist of yore,” he says over a call from Delhi. “Instead of taking the picture I see, I go and make the image I want.”

His frank-speak translates into highly-conceptual frames: from telling portraits of famous personalities to fine art and fashion photographs. There’s an evocative one where a solitary tree dwarfs actor Nafisa Ali — to depict loss — in his 1994 tribute series to the vanguard designer Rohit Khosla, or that of a rectangular box which frames thought leaders in his Out of the Box series.

Now, 70 such design-led photographs, curated from his 40-year journey, feature in a new exhibition. Titled The Design Eye, it’s being held at furniture brand Spin’s 8,000-sq-ft experience store in New Delhi. The space, says Chawla, complements his design aesthetic and helps reach out to newer audiences beyond the usual gallery crowds.