In smaller Indian cities of India where public infrastructure thins out, auto(rickshaws) becomes the core circulatory system of everyday life. A small shake of the hand or holler on the road and one can find an autowala (colloquial phrase for auto drivers in India) asking: where to? Everytime I took an auto ride, the first thing that intrigues me is the light reflecting through the colourful autos. The texture of the sheet covering the vehicle, the fabric of seat and small door on the sides, the lights and decorative forms on the roof, small items of belongings or faded picture of bollywood on the dashboard, the sassy comments painted on the back of the auto, the sparkling tassels on the mirror, calendar laminated above the windshield, a string of LED lights, Each auto has its own vibe. As they move through the city, they carry fragments of identity and self-fashioning. The autowala had spent real time, money, and thought making the vehicle an extension of his taste, his choices and projections.
Taste, as Bourdieu argued, is never innocent. It is structured by the social conditions that produce it : a map of one's position in the world. The autowala's aesthetic vocabulary is a dense document of class, region, aspiration and belonging. The elements of the vehicle are expressive gestures within limitation, revealing how aesthetics emerge in economic precarity. Each auto becomes an intimate, mobile archive bearing traces of its driver’s sensibilities, aspirations, and lived conditions.
I would have small conversations with the autowala bhaiya and sometimes it was their family who chose the pink leather covering and seats, his teenage daughter recommended sound system. Someone said that the blue green lights made women passengers feel safer in late evenings. Every item was a conscious choice, even when I couldn't fully read it. The work positions it within the framework of Sociology of Taste, where taste is understood not as an individual choice alone, but as something shaped by access, exposure, class structures, and cultural circulation.
I've been photographing these autos across two years of endless rides in Nagpur. It started as an act of observing to documenting and engaging with vernacular aesthetics of India, where questions of taste, identity, and socio-economic positioning converge into material culture. In doing so, the work challenges dominant definitions of aesthetics.
