To Reach the Source: The Stepwells of India

More than just a shaft dug into the earth to fetch water, these are entire buildings that descend several stories below ground; they are spaces to be entered and occupied, serving functional, social, and ritual purposes. Often, they are as monumental and ornate as a church, and this is intentional. They are a source of water, a gathering space, and a temple all at once, but instead of rising into the sky, they descend below the surface. They create a spatial experience unlike any other, in which one is below ground but remains connected to the sun and sky. Today they lie largely abandoned and overlooked, in various states of preservation or, more often, disrepair.

The photographs seek to recreate the striking ambiance that they elicit. The brief text that follows the images (interspersed with a few architectural drawings) provides a necessary minimum of context, ultimately to reinforce the primarily visual nature of the reader's experience, one in which the photographs have priority. The photographs seek to give readers some sense of the meditative process of descending into these beautiful structures, of going away from the surface on which we live, but not being cut off from it, instead directed towards the very source of life.