Photo exhibition: The link between Australian aborigines and the Dravidians

John Gollings takes us through some of the most fascinating built heritage

There is growing evidence that the earliest inhabitant of Australia, the Aboriginal Australian, was the Dravidian Indian,” says John Gollings. The Australian architectural photographer is standing in front of his picture of the Nawarla Gabarnmang rock shelter, an extraordinary site located in the Jawoyn Aboriginal country in Arnhem Land, Australia.
 

john gollings, Architectural photographer

It is a photograph of a rock painting dating back 28,000 years that depicts a couple, with a baby in the woman’s body and a linga (phallic symbol) in the man’s. “This is the first time I have come across the linga (an aniconic representation of Shiva) in the context of ancient Australia,” says Gollings, who has been photographing dead and living cities for the last 50 years. The Nawarla Gabarnmang rock shelter is the oldest human construction he has photographed.
 
The photograph is part of Gollings’s exhibition, The History of the Built World, which features in the second edition of Habitat Photosphere, a year-long photography festival at India Habitat Centre, Delhi.
 

Rock Art Cathedral at Nawarla Gabarnmang, Arnhem Land, Australia

Gollings is not a stranger to India. In the 1980s, before Hampi in Karnataka was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site, he would spend days photographing it. Some of these photographs, such as the Hanuman temple at sunset, the Vittala temple and the Elephant Stables of the Vijayanagara empire, are on display. Many of these images are in black and white, shot at night after lighting up the entire structure to bring out its details.
 
Gollings is an experimental photographer also known for his aerial shots — taken from helicopters or airplanes, and now with drones. A stunning aerial shot of Bayon, the richly decorated Khmer temple at Angkor in Cambodia, was achieved with him tied to a seat at the back of a bomber airplane. But those days of adventure and leisure photography are over — at least when it comes to heritage sites. “Aerial photography at Angkor Wat is banned now,” says Gollings. “The beautiful structures at Hampi, too, have been fenced up.”
 

Lotus Mahal from the Vijayanagara empire in Hampi, Karnataka

And then culture tourism has also gone berserk. “Tourists have made it impossible to get a clean shot,” he says. Yet, on the walls are neat pictures of structures — ancient, modern, iconic — with only a smattering of humans. This is something Gollings has painstakingly achieved, stitching together the pictures, frame by frame, to eliminate — or minimise — human disturbance.
 
In India, stepwells are his latest interest and he photographs them using a radio-controlled camera flash to light up the dark corners. Spectacular structures, many of them now lie unknown and undocumented. Gollings hopes to change that.
 

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The History of the Built World can be viewed at the Experimental Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi till March 18