Chicago Photographer Discovers Mystical Ruins in India
Armed with a small point-and-shoot camera, and with the courage of a hungry traveler who has a profound love for exploring ruins, Victoria Lautman shares how she stumbled upon India's unexplored ruins.
Lautman is a Chicago-based adventure-journalist who is "obsessed" with finding stepwells, huge and cavern-like wells that require people to descend sets of steps before obtaining water. According to CNN, stepwells have an amazing history of old since way back A.D. 600, wherein the architectural sites were once adored but are now forgotten.
However, Lautman is on a journey toward uncovering the beauty of the structures hidden in the suburbs of India. She says her travels have been assisted by none other than drivers, villagers, and other people who would like to help in her goal of having the world remember the forgotten ruins.
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The photographer says she has explored over 120 stepwells in her four-year travels. "In its heyday there were around 3,000 stepwells throughout India. Now there are about 1,000 left," she says.
During her adventures to the ruins, Lautman noticed that the shape and width of the structures in terms of design should have had something to do with the quality of stone and soil used. She notes that there are some measures used by the ancient people to keep walls from collapsing in sandier areas such as Gujarat.
Aside from serving as the main source of water in areas where they have been structured, stepwells were also used back in the days as locations where people can socialize and get some refuge from the heat. In many of the ruins, Lautman observes that intricate carvings of deities could be seen, meaning the sites could have also served as subterranean temples.
Although Rani-ki-Vav, also called the Queen's Stepwell, in Gujarat has been recognized by the UNESCO as a World Heritage site last year, majority of the ruins are undocumented, which, according to Lautman, has made her accept the challenge of going through unusual measures such as rely on word of mouth to get the stepwells remembered.
