When Mumbai-based photographer Rajesh Vora travelled to Punjab state in 2014, he was struck by the enormous cartoonish sculptures that adorned rooftops across the region’s rural villages. Known as “showpieces”, the artworks double as water tanks and are part of a custom beginning in the 1970s, wherein Punjabi citizens who had immigrated to other parts of the world erected them on top of the homes they’d kept in their native country as a symbol of prosperity. “I was in awe of their grandiosity, elaborate ornamentation and emotional exuberance,” says Vora, who has spent the past few years travelling to more than 150 villages to capture rooftops embellished with everything from aeroplanes to footballers. Everyday Baroque, a collection of these images on display at the Arles festival of photography, tells the story of how “these icons of aspiration are often entwined with the personal histories of their owners”.
