Looking Without a Camera: Notes from Sites Across India

These visits occurred over many years, across educational trips, fieldwork, and personal travel. Rather than documenting each site visually, this post reflects on recurring observations that emerged across contexts. These encounters were not always documented carefully, nor were they always undertaken with the intention of producing outcomes. What follows is not a travelogue, but a record of how repeated exposure to historical sites gradually altered the way I look.

My formal training in applied art emphasized output: deadlines, finished compositions, and visual clarity. Success was measured by what could be produced, displayed, or evaluated within a fixed timeframe. While this training sharpened my visual skills, it also cultivated a relationship with art that prioritised speed over observation. It was only through fieldwork at historical sites that I began to understand the intellectual value of slowness.

Visiting sites such as Halebeedu, Hampi, and Hoysala temples in Karnataka was both overwhelming and humbling. The density of sculptural detail far exceeded what any single visit could fully absorb. Unlike museums or curated exhibitions, these sites offered no comprehensive guides or interpretive aids. Without free guides readily available, appreciation depended entirely on one’s capacity to observe, question, and remain patient in uncertainty.

Initially, this felt like a failure on my part. Accustomed to structured explanations, I struggled with not knowing what I was seeing. Yet this discomfort gradually transformed into attentiveness. I began to notice patterns, repetitions, and anomalies; not because they were explained to me, but because time allowed them to surface. Fieldwork demanded a slower rhythm, one that resisted immediate comprehension.

A contrasting experience occurred at a large church complex in Goa, where a museum housed relics of medieval architecture and memorial stones under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India. While the effort to preserve and display was evident, some labels felt insufficient, leaving objects under-contextualised. Rather than drawing conclusions, this experience sharpened my awareness of interpretive responsibility. It reminded me that explanation is not neutral, and that absence of clarity can shape understanding as much as misinformation.

One moment in Hampi crystallised this learning. While examining a sculptural relief on a temple pillar, I noticed a depiction that appeared unusual. When I asked a temple priest about it, he explained that it represented an all-women army of the Vijayanagara Empire. His explanation was not academic, but it was delivered with unmistakable pride. This brief exchange revealed how local custodians often carry historical knowledge that does not always appear in formal texts, yet remains deeply meaningful.

This moment taught me that learning in art history does not always originate from authoritative sources. It often emerges through conversation, curiosity, and humility. It also revealed how pride in an egalitarian past can persist through oral memory, even when marginalised in dominant narratives.

As my engagement with fieldwork deepened, my relationship with studio practice began to shift. I stopped making art recreationally, partly because I felt I was “not good enough.” This admission is uncomfortable, but honest. The emphasis on output had made creation feel evaluative rather than exploratory. In contrast, fieldwork allowed me to exist in a space where not knowing was acceptable, even productive.

Looking slowly taught me that meaning is not always immediately visible. It requires patience, attentiveness, and a willingness to remain with ambiguity. These qualities, largely absent from output-driven environments, are essential to art historical inquiry. Fieldwork did not replace my practice training; it recalibrated my values. It taught me that seeing deeply is an intellectual act, and that slowness is not inefficiency, but rigor.

Across regions and typologies, one pattern appeared consistently: heritage is often present without enough interpretation. As Dr. B. N. Goswami said in one of his articles, we are unable to tap into the massive viewership that longs to know and see because we simply do not care enough or work hard enough. When we have the materials, we seem not to have the energy or the enterprise, and when we have scholarship, we seem not to be able to make it accessible. At places such as the Modhera Sun Temple museum in Gujarat or Jantar Mantar in Delhi, the structures themselves were powerful, but the explanatory frameworks felt limited. Displays frequently assumed prior knowledge or offered minimal contextual grounding, leaving visitors to either accept surfaces or struggle independently. This absence did not always feel like neglect; rather, it revealed how easily interpretation is treated as secondary to preservation.

In contrast, some of the most meaningful insights emerged not from official narratives, but from people positioned outside them. In Badami, a security guard noticed my questions about a display and offered a detailed explanation of sculptural motifs and site history. At Ellora, another guard, belonging to a different religious tradition than the deities depicted, approached my friends and me after seeing our sustained attention to reliefs. With careful enthusiasm, he explained architectural, engineering, and artistic features in remarkable detail. These encounters complicated my assumptions about authority and expertise. Knowledge at heritage sites often survives through care and familiarity rather than formal designation.

Another recurring tension I observed was between pride and abandonment. At places such as Patiala Palace or older residential complexes attached to historic estates, heritage stood as a marker of identity, yet also as a burden. The emotional attachment to these spaces was visible, but so was the difficulty of sustaining them in the present. Maintenance, relevance, and economic viability often felt misaligned with preservation. Heritage here was not decaying physically as much as it was becoming difficult to live with.

Tourism, too, shapes what is remembered and what is overlooked. At Ajanta, the guide’s narrative directed visitors toward the inscription of the British officer credited with the site’s “discovery,” while barely addressing the extraordinary antiquity and complexity of the paintings themselves. Cave 12, which contains some of the earliest surviving painted human figures in the subcontinent, received little attention beyond crowd movement. This imbalance revealed how easily colonial markers become focal points, even when they are historically marginal to the site’s cultural significance.

Gendered imagery emerged in quieter, more unexpected ways. In several ancient temple complexes, I encountered depictions of goddesses portrayed as powerful, dominant figures, sometimes seated upon or standing over male counterparts. This imagery contrasted sharply with the domesticated representations of femininity I had grown accustomed to seeing. Elsewhere, in a museum in Goa, memorial stones associated with plague deaths bore iconographic similarities to sati stones. This visual resemblance raised questions for me about mourning, catastrophe, and how symbols migrate across contexts. These were not conclusions, but moments where looking carefully unsettled what I thought I already knew.

Over time, my way of being at sites changed. Friends once remarked that they had never seen me as visibly absorbed and happy as I was while moving through temples and museums. I began reading plaques obsessively, carrying a small sketchbook, asking guards and locals questions, and feeling acutely frustrated by how much I did not understand. Repeated visits only deepened this awareness. I returned to Jain temples in Gandhinagar multiple times, and spent over ten hours in the National Museum, knowing each visit would still be insufficient.

Looking slowly did not bring clarity as much as it brought humility. Each site revealed how partial my understanding was, and how much patience historical art requires. These encounters taught me that heritage is not exhausted through viewing, and that observation itself is a form of responsibility. I remain aware that I am still learning how to look.