Portrait of the Past Aghori: Jan Skwara’s Forgotten Worlds

In the shadowy silence of India’s cremation grounds, the air grows thick with smoke and secrets. Here, among the ashes of the dead, an enigmatic sect—cloaked in mystery and feared for their rites—walks a path most would dread to even imagine. The Aghoris. Devotees of Shiva, the god of destruction and regeneration, are keepers of rituals as old as time itself. They meditate with skulls as their companions, draping themselves in ashes from funeral pyres. To the outside world, they might seem like relics of a forgotten era, an unsettling glimpse into the forbidden realms of life and death. Yet, these ascetics, who blur the line between the living and the dead, do not seek fear, but moksha—liberation from the cycle of rebirth. It is this raw, untamed world that Jan Skwara has captured, not in vivid, polished clarity, but through the haunting imperfection of 19th-century wet collodion photography, a medium as evocative and ghostly as the Aghoris themselves.

At first glance, Jan Skwara’s Portrait of the Past: Aghori pulls you in, not just because of their raw intensity but because they seem to blur the line between centuries, leaving you wondering whether the subjects belong to today or some distant epoch.

The use of the collodion process feels almost like an invocation of the past. The flaws in the photographs—the cracks, the blurred edges, the streaks of light—aren’t mistakes but intentional scars on the film, much like the Aghoris themselves, who wear the ashes of the dead as both armor and offering. Each image, bathed in the timeless glow of this archaic technique, feels like it was plucked from the pages of history. You find yourself questioning: Am I witnessing the present or peering into a forgotten past?

What sets this exhibition apart is not just its focus on the Aghoris, but the experiential depth Skwara brings to the project. As you move from one image to the next, you realize these aren’t just photos—they are windows into Skwara’s journey, as he lived with the Aghoris, accompanied gurus, and even ventured to the sacred Kamakhya temple during the Ambubachi Mela festival. This immersion allows the photographer to document not just faces, but lives, stories, and rituals that are unknown or misunderstood by much of the world.

The Aghoris do not pose for the camera—they simply are. Their stillness is unsettling, almost as if they are the embodiment of the void they worship. In one photograph, a guru sits in meditation, his gaze fixed on something beyond comprehension, beyond this world. The faint chemical stains on the photo’s surface only deepen the surreal effect, making the image appear like a window into another realm. His ornaments, made from human bones, gleam softly, and you can almost hear the distant chanting, the crackling of the cremation fire, the hum of existence teetering between life and death.

But this is not a macabre spectacle, it’s a reflection of a deeper truth. The Aghoris do not fear death; they embrace it as a passage to freedom. And Skwara’s photographs, with their ghostly aura, invite you to witness this fearless communion with mortality. 

In Portrait of the Past: Aghori, Skwara doesn’t just show us photographs. He shows us what it means to exist on the fringes, to hold onto something as fragile as tradition in a world that is ever-changing. The exhibition doesn’t seek to answer questions—it leaves you with them. What does it mean to truly live beyond fear? To embrace death as liberation? And, most hauntingly, what will be lost when these ancient ways inevitably fade into history?

This exhibition is not just an invitation to look—it is a call to witness. To feel the weight of time, tradition, and the transient nature of existence. As you leave the exhibition, you may find yourself glancing over your shoulder, half expecting to see one of the Aghoris watching, from somewhere in the shadows, a silent reminder of the world we often forget lies just beyond our view.

View the entire exhibition here.