Auroville 1968-2018 glimpses into 50 years of photographic archives

Book reviewBy Alan

Keywords: New publications, Photo books, Books, Auroville history, Early years and 50th Anniversary – Auroville

Cover - Auroville 1968-2018

How can you encompass something as complex and as multi-layered as Auroville? You can’t, of course. But it may be easier to capture something of this extraordinary adventure through images than through words. It is significant, then, that this large compilation of Auroville photographs taken over the last 50 years and compiled and worked upon – a huge task in itself by Olivier Barot has a minimum of explanatory text.

Many of the photos are black and white and this, combined with the large format (34.5 x 25 cms), gives a unique sense of the texture of life here. We are taken from the very beginnings of the project in 1968 up to the water ceremony in the Amphitheatre that celebrated Auroville’s 50th year.

On the one hand, there is something timeless about these photos, like the ancient landscapes or the luminosity of countless faces and bodies. On the other hand, there is a distinct sense of progression. In the early days, Aspiration appeared a precarious interloper in the larger landscape of rural Tamil Nadu, but within a few years the ambitious statements of Last School and Auromodèle have risen from the laterite.

But it is the images of the progress of the Matrimandir which best chart the toil, dedication and aspiration of all those who worked upon it. From the few pioneers awkwardly scraping the earth at the very beginning, via the collective concretings, to the glorious images of the completed interior many years later, one experiences the gradual manifestation in matter of a vision which drew people from all over the globe.

This is more than an interesting collection of photographs. To turn these pages is to experience something of the joy, sweat, intensity, beauty, determination, creativity and, above all, aspiration for something else, that has created what is best in the Auroville of today.

Olivier has done a fine job. This major offering is a fitting conclusion to Auroville’s 50th year.


Auroville 1968 – 2018: glimpses into 50 years of photographic archives. 448 pages, published by Sri Aurobindo Institute of Educational Research, 2018. The book was made possible by a grant from the Auroville Foundation. It will be available in due course from Auroville bookshops and on Auroville.com