Rohit Chawla’s ‘Portrait of an Artist’ captures 67 Indian artists across generations

New Delhi: Photographer Rohit Chawla keeps returning to one word for his life’s work: trespassing. For the first four decades of his career, he shot prime ministers, film stars, artists and authors for covers and features in India’s top magazines. “I used to feel lucky to meet a particular actor or writer,” he says. “I was the interloper with the camera, grateful for whatever the subject chose to reveal.”

That has changed. “Now, at this stage of my life, I look back and feel that I belong in this whole thing. I can chronicle my own life rather than trespass. I still use portraiture to get to know the artists and creatives I admire more closely.”

The shift informs his latest book. Portrait of an Artist, published by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi and co-published by Mapin Publishing, brings together 67 portraits of Indian artists across generations and mediums.

The ₹2,500 volume includes S.H. Raza and Akbar Padamsee, Bharti Kher and Shilpa Gupta, late masters Tyeb Mehta and Bhupen Khakhar, and younger painters like Kulpreet Singh.Art critic Kishore Singh wrote the text, described as crystalline and unencumbered.