This photography exhibition at Hyderabad’s Maison d’Art Banjara brings 1980s Rajasthan to life

Anne Garde has a way of making the ordinary quietly shine with her Hasselblad cameras. Traveling to Jaipur, Udaipur and Jodhpur in an ambassador in the 1980s, the French photographer recorded everyday life in rural Rajasthan: women walking with their Veil Photographed below, a tea seller is in the middle of a ritual, a man resting in front of a wall hand-painted with advertisements. Four decades later, these images have found a new home at Maison d’Art Banjara, the visual arts gallery of Ashiana-Imli Sarai in Banjara Hills. Topic Shiva BluesThis exhibition is presented in collaboration with Alliance Française of Hyderabad (AFH).

clear images

Anne Garde | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

With her writer friend Sylvie Roulet, Anne traveled to India for the first time Salon Indian (Released in English as Palaces of the Maharajas), a book that took 14 years to complete. During those years, the two made frequent trips throughout North India, visiting palaces one after another. These photos of Rajasthan were made in a single day, captured in brief breaks between stops. “We were constantly moving,” Anne recalls. “Driving from one city to another, passing through villages, I met people on the road and took these candid photos.”

shades of blue

Photo displayed in the gallery. Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The 25 images in the gallery reveal a slice of India and the tranquil rhythm of daily life. Look carefully and the photos show something almost unreal: human skin tinted blue. Anne, now 70, recalls using a procedure that produced this effect. “When I treated the film with a chemical bath, the negative lost its transparency and became opaque. The image was reversed, and the skin turned blue. This worked especially well with photographs shot in India because the country is full of colors.”

Photos displayed in the gallery. Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

For Anne, the color blue holds symbolic significance in Indian mythology. It is reminiscent of Shiva – Neelkantha, the blue-throated deity, who wore poison around his neck to save the world. “This legend still resonates today,” she says. “It blurs the line between divinity and everyday life, where ordinary people face hardships yet maintain resilience.” These works have been shown earlier in Delhi and Puducherry.

Anne takes great care to preserve the negatives of her photographs which are organized by year, country, city and subject. “The originals are in perfect condition; they are kept at a constant temperature in files hanging on metal shelves in a room. In 2026, the French Ministry of Culture will take over my photographic heritage. So everything will be stored and preserved.”

Shiva Blues, a photography exhibition, is on view at Maison d’Art Banjara, Hyderabad till February 3, 2026.