Capturing Life

John Mandeen passed away just over a year ago. John was a photographer who worked for many years with the Ashram Press, but he also extensively documented life in Auroville from the early 1980s, including important stages in the construction of the Matrimandir.

Recently, Centre d’Art staged an exhibition of the photos he took in Auroville between 1980–2020. Titled ‘Capturing Life’, they showcased his purity of line and composition—for he was a perfectionist—as well as his ability to capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of his inspirations, termed the “decisive moment”, that instant when everything in a scene momentarily coheres to create something magically memorable. 

John’s integrity and his ability to capture such moments on film make his photos an invaluable archive not only of the physical developments but, above all, of the spirit of those earlier Auroville years.