For over seven years, photographer Sebastian Cortes has been living with his family in Auroville. The city of Pondicherry and its surroundings are special to him as they exude an exoticism that inspires and mixes with the evident complexities of booming India. In the photo-essay Pondicherry, he explores a city criss-crossed by different influences and captures the city’s environment through his lens. “The challenge was to avoid incorporating the obvious, go beyond the walls and penetrate into the private spheres, homes, spaces and routines which reflect a certain culture or cultures,” he says.

Cortis then sent his images to several noted French and Indian writers – like Pascal Bruckner, a French intellectual with a good understanding and love for India, Akash Kapur, an Indian, who has deep roots in Pondicherry but has travelled and lived abroad for many years, and Amin Jaffer an art historian and director of Christie’s in India – who offered their personal insights. The final interplay of words and images create an artistic perception of the real world and offer a more dynamic view of Pondicherry.

The lensman has used a straight photography approach as opposed to journalistic style photography often used in photo essays: “I have not used the large or medium format but remained with the simplicity of the 35 mm camera, almost always with a tripod and long exposures.” For him, photography is a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant and inaccessible – of making it stand still. “Nothing is completely new in any project, but my style and my approach to the subject are very different from everything done in this genre up to now.”

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