About the photoshoot:
To explore the coolness of ‘chaandi’, we decided to do a photostory by the river. It is unfortunate that over the last couple of decades the river that flows in our city is known for all the wrong reasons; for how it is dying and full of filth. And slowly, the river is drifting away from the living memory of the locals, or at least a certain generation. We wanted to go back to the river, to make it part of our conversations once again, not for just being on the brink of death, but for something more- for the peace one can find being near it even today, or for the beauty that can still be seen in it, if you want to.
However, it does take a shift in perspective to see something differently. And we were fortunate to be in company of travellers for this shoot. One of the most important things about traveling is the newness of perspective, the openness to beauty and faith in the universe that one needs to have as one sets one’s foot out of home. We found just the right people for it. Danielli and Douglus were into their 9th month of bicyling around the world when they came to Agra. What was supposed to be a 2 day thing turned into a beautiful stay of about 20 days, where we shared and exchanged so much of our lives, culture and perspectives with each other. We convinced them that there was more to Agra than the Taj Mahal and petha. As they stayed, we cooked, we sang, we danced, we laughed and cried together. Through their trip we collaborated on a couple of projects, and one of them turned out to be this shoot.
We went to Kailash temple (one of the four famous Shiva temples in the Agra), by the river Yamuna. Danielli wanted to dress in Indian attire and we decided that to make her our model. She loved some of the pieces of this collection and it suddenly felt all of it fitted perfectly well.
Here we had in front of us this strong and beautiful women, traveling around the world with her partner whose dream it was to cycle around the world. And there was the river, the moon, the cool and the new eyes of travellers, uncorrupted by preconceived notions and habit. We could see the river differently. And create images in a manner more fulfilling. And in all this process, Douglus collaborated with us behind the camera.
(The photostory has been conceptualised and executed by Tahir Ahmed at the Studio Blue Cat, which is the creative & media collaborator of ISOVI)
