25 . 02 . 2026 · Delhi · Field Notes

To be in Delhi

Walking the same paths every morning, until the city begins to show itself.

There is a particular Delhi that exists only at the edge of morning. The light is colourless then — not yet warm, not still cold — and the city breathes in a way I do not see anywhere else in India.

I came to Lodhi Gardens before dawn most days last winter. The joggers were already there. The dogs were already there. The trees had been there much longer than any of us. I made photographs because I did not know what else to do with the silence.

A tree is not a portrait, exactly. But it is not nothing either. Roots and bark and the slow accumulation of years. The pradakshina path around Bara Gumbad. Stone benches. The way fog gathers and disperses around Sikander Lodi’s tomb like it has rehearsed it for five hundred years.

I think I came to Delhi to photograph silence. The city does not have any. But its monuments do — those stubborn, ridiculous, beautiful structures that outlast every empire that built them and every conqueror who came to dismantle them. Humayun’s Tomb on a Tuesday morning is the closest I have come to a religious experience in a long time.

Walking back through Khan Market the streets had filled. The day had started without asking me. I came home with twelve frames and three I would keep. That, I am learning, is enough.

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If you have your own quiet Delhi to recommend — a lane, a stepwell, a particular tree — write to me. I am planning a return in November.

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Photographs made between January 18 and February 22, 2026.

Sony α7 V  ·  24–70mm, 85mm

Delhi · Architecture · Field Notes