Black Beauty

Lakshmi wears pretty anklets; Kamakshi has an elaborate design in sacred ash on her forehead; Jayanthi is blessed with the auspicious white face — a mark of Indra’s hoary tusker. These are some of the eccentricities that one notices while looking at the portraits of temple elephants in Tamil Nadu. Swiss photographer Coni Horler has travelled the length and breath of the state,from Kanchipuram to Tiruttani,Puducherry to Madurai and Tiruchirapalli to Srirangam— his muse is the benign pachyderm of the temple,earning a living for its handlers and blessing the believers.

“My series began with a single image of an elephant in Tiruvannamalai,it inspired me to do a whole series because I felt elephants have personalities of their own. While the Tamil Nadu government has taken note of their neglect — they now have medical check ups and even holidays — the elephants are generally an exploited species,” says Horler,37,who exhibited his photographs at the India Habitat Centre. His other works include a series of portraits of people from villages in Garwal and handicapped children in Kerala.

Kerala has an equally vibrant culture of temple elephants,but Horler chose Tamil Nadu. “They have some of the oldest and beautiful temples. I found Kerala a bit touristy. In Tamil Nadu there aren’t many western tourists,” says Horler,who did a Bangalore-Kanyakumari trip on his 1963 Vespa scooter.

Born and raised in Zurich ,Horler made his first trip to India in 1996. “It is true I had a culture shock but when I came back in 1998 and stayed longer,I got to love this country,” says Horler a one-time law student who dropped out and took up his Hasselblad camera. He hasn’t looked back since. “I’ve stayed in India for nine years now,I never planned to settle in Bangalore but I have,” says the photographer,who did his own dark-room techniques in Switzerland but in

India he prefers to develop the film in Delhi and Mumbai. A limited edition of 10 prints comes in two sizes,60×60 inches priced at 45,000 and 44×44 inches that are priced at Rs 35,000.

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