Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paolo Roversi: The Smell of India
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paolo Roversi
Studio EXB, 2025
€55,00
One evening in January 1989, photographer Paolo Roversi stopped at the Malabar Hotel in Cochin, in the Kerala region. He had already made several trips to India. That evening, as he began reading Pier Paolo Pasolini’s *The Scent of India*, he realized he was staying in the very same hotel where his fellow Italian had stayed almost thirty years earlier. In 1961, Pasolini traveled to India with Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante. *The Scent of India*, which he wrote upon his return, evokes his impressions, his nocturnal wanderings, and also his encounters. In this work, Pasolini bears witness to his wonder and his profound experience of a different kind of humanity, far removed from Western perceptions.
Thirty years later, Paolo Roversi presents an equally mystical and wondrous India, captured in sepia tones and powdery colors, the signature of his aesthetic. The variations in light and the sculpted forms create a dreamlike, suspended world. Crumbling marble palaces, small shops, alleyways populated by a menagerie of donkeys and sacred cows, sandy valleys bathed in an amber haze, and above all, portraits of women, men, and children, all bearing the gentle and elegant gaze of Roversi. Concentrated on their tasks or posing before the photographer’s lens, they compose a kaleidoscopic portrait of India.
Published alongside Pasolini’s complete text, Roversi’s *The Scent of India* immerses the reader in a mysterious and fantastical India. At the end of the book, a text by Paolo Roversi recounts his search for an orphan named Revi, whom Pasolini met, and an appendix presents a collection of letters from the Italian author as well as an interview.
ISBN: 9782365114639
