Kanu Gandhi is the great nephew of the Mahatma Gandhi. He spent his childhood with his parents and Gandhi in the ashram of Sabermati. In 1936 he joined the close guard of Ghandi and started photographing him while travelling or during his daily life at the ashram. Gandhi gave him permission to do so on conditions that he never used a flash, never asked him to pose and that it would cost the ashram nothing.
Seldom credited the pictures made between 1938-1948 year of Gandhi’s assassination are among the most famous of the Mahatma thanks to them he who refused to pose became the icône that we know.
With about 40 pictures exhibited at the Habitat Center in New Delhi we follow Gandhi in his public life, with Nehru and Patel two important actors of India independane, with the Nobel peace prize of literature Rabindranath Tagore at the university of Santiniketan in Bengal.
We see him also during more intimate moments , falling asleep on his papers in a train, having his feet washed by his wife Kasturba or coming out of his office a pillow on his head to protect himself from the sun.
The pictures of Kana Gandhi today belongs to his gran children and are exhibited for the first time in India.
Sybile Girault
Kanu’s Gandhi
Kanu Gandhi
