A unique photographic book has emerged that masterfully combines the visual artistry of renowned photographer Paolo Roversi with the literary legacy of filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. "The Scent of India" presents Roversi's haunting photographs taken during his travels to India in the early 1990s, accompanied by Pasolini's travel writings from his own journey between Bombay and Kerala in 1960.
Paolo Roversi, the master of light and pictorial composition born in Ravenna on the Adriatic coast, embarked on this Indian odyssey at the height of his fashion photography career. Working from his painter's studio in Paris's 14th arrondissement, Roversi was known for seeking an absolute form of beauty in his work. Though not typically drawn to travel, when he did venture far from home, it was always for truly transcendental experiences.
The photographer's passion for poetry and his fascination with the bohemian follies of the Beat Generation influenced his approach to capturing India. Without any predetermined ideas, he pursued his quest for a tender, fervent, and fragile luminosity throughout the vast subcontinent. His images freeze people and landscapes in sublime spectral colors, creating a sense where time seems to evaporate entirely.
Roversi's India appears noble, tranquil, and silent, burning with a gentle flame. As he often explains his artistic philosophy: "There are photographers of pain and the world's ugliness, and those of beauty and the joy of living: war photographers and peace photographers." His work clearly falls into the latter category, though the artist himself admits to being more torn than he sometimes reveals.
The book's title and guiding spirit come from Pier Paolo Pasolini's travel account, written during his 1960 journey to India with writers Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante. In an interview with journalist and curator Philippe Séclier, Roversi revealed that he carried Pasolini's book with him during his own Indian travels. "I learned to look at India in a different way," Roversi explained. "In a certain way, he helped me better perceive this very great country."
Pasolini's feverish words and the intensity that inhabited him invite viewers to see Roversi's images differently, as if they pierce through shadows and veils to reveal intimate details, hidden folds of rage and suffering, and wounds from the past carved into weathered stones. The filmmaker threw himself body and soul into the strangeness of this absolutely foreign land, writing: "I don't know how to control the thirsty beast that turns within me, as if in a cage."
Yet Pasolini also found a form of peace in India, describing "a deep feeling of communion, tranquility, and almost joy." This duality allows readers to voyage between the written word and the photograph, from image to narrative, exactly as Roversi had dreamed when he first conceived of publishing this collection thirty years ago.
The photographer followed in his predecessor's footsteps, searching among the multitude for figures that Pasolini might have encountered. Most importantly, he grappled with the same fundamental questions as an Italian man whose childhood was dominated by Catholicism, discovering another religion, another light, another relationship with the world. "Hinduism is a magnificent religion," professed the atheist Pasolini. "It has made men modest, gentle, reasonable. It is this spirit of quietude that made Gandhi's remarkable political action possible: non-violence."
This "spirit of quietude" doesn't distance itself from melancholy or pain. Roversi shared a poignant memory with Philippe Séclier that illuminates his connection to Pasolini's legacy. When Roversi was a student in Ravenna, his Latin professor, to whom he often went for private lessons, was none other than Pasolini's aunt. One day, there was a knock at her door—it was Pier Paolo himself.
"She asked him what he was doing there, and he immediately replied that he needed to get away from Rome and flee the persecution he was suffering: trials, criticism, and attacks of all kinds," Roversi recalled. "I saw him lean on the table, his head in his arms, and he began to cry. That's the image that remains with me of Pier Paolo Pasolini. That of a very great poet in tears, who had been greatly wronged."
The resulting book creates a profound dialogue between two artistic visions separated by decades but united by their encounter with India's transformative power. Roversi's photographs, with their ethereal quality and masterful use of light, complement Pasolini's introspective and sometimes tortured prose, creating a meditation on cultural encounter, spiritual discovery, and artistic expression. "The Scent of India" stands as both a visual feast and a literary journey, offering multiple ways to experience and understand the subcontinent's enduring influence on Western artists and intellectuals.
