A compelling storyteller, art historian, cultural anthropologist, photographer and author, Huyler’s inspiring account of his life combines wit, insight, and candor.
Travelling the length and breadth of India, over more than 50 years, for an average of four months each year, he has documented the profound meanings and significance of rural India’s sacred art and crafts. Having learned to feel the pulse of the people, he has himself been accepted by a remarkable range of individuals from maharajah to musician, Brahmin to Dalit, and politician to potter.
He has been the Consultant and Guest Curator for more than twenty-five major museum exhibitions of Indian art for Indian as well as international arts museums and other institutions, such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the Mingei International Museum.
A leading photographer of India, his extensive image archive has resulted in solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Smithsonian, the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), and the Kodak Center for Creative Imaging.
He is also the author of six earlier books (published in the USA by Abrams, Rizzoli, Yale University Press, and Abbeville; in the UK by Thames & Hudson; in France by Flammarion; in Germany by Frederking & Thaler; and in India by Mapin as well as by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts). The books are:
– Daughters of India: Art and Identity,
– Gifts of Earth: Terracottas and Clay Sculptures of India,
– Painted Prayers: Women’s Art in Village India,
– Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion,
– Sonabai: Another Way of Seeing, and
– Village India.
His latest book, Transformed by India: A Life (Pippa Rann Books & Media, U.K. www.pipparannbooks.com; distributed in Canada and the USA by Trafalgar Square Publishing/ Independent Publishers Group; in the UK/ Europe by Gardners; and in India & 16 other Asian countries by Penguin Random House India) evokes an India rarely seen by outsiders – people, places, and customs which are, in fact, today, not known even by many Indians.
An excerpt from Transformed by India: A Life
The culmination of my parent’s trip was a week on the New Peony, the same houseboat in Kashmir that Helene and I had occupied five years earlier. Our experience excelled our expectations. Mom and Dad were relaxed and appreciative. It was the first time in my life that I felt fully accepted by them. The highlight was a camping voyage diametrically different from the bare bones horseback trips we’d taken in my childhood into the mountains behind Ojai. Through historical accounts, I learned that the Mughal emperors used large wooden boats for multi-day excursions down the Jhelum River and through the unsurpassably beautiful Vale of Kashmir. Although no such boats had been used in many decades, I discovered one in drydock, its primary structure still sound. For an amazingly small sum, I was able to have it outfitted with a new thatched roof and decks. Mr. Major provided all mattresses, bolsters, silk carpets and quilts, a cookstove, utensils, and crockery. Ghulam arranged for the crew and accompanied us himself.
After breakfast onboard the New Peony, we boarded our forty-two-foot wooden-hulled giant shikara. As on the smaller shikaras—the taxi boats in Kashmir—a solid wooden backrest three-feet high, with a curtain above it, divided front from rear. A third of the vessel behind us held the four oarsmen, a cook, and Ghulam, our bearer.
Mattresses covered by carpets filled the long, narrowing foredeck. All four of us sat side-by-side propped by pillows and bolsters against the backrest as the oarsmen gently paddled us through willow-lined corridors alongside garden after garden of flowering bulbs. Bright turquoise and orange kingfishers swooped down into the crystal-clear water to catch small fish. Once we joined the mainstream, the rapid current took us down into the valley far away from any other tourists.
We passed many villages with Tudor-looking half-timbered houses, their sod roofs covered in moss and flowers. Children called out and waved to us as we went by. Behind us, pots on the cooking fire bubbled with the savory scents of lamb stew. At our choice, we stopped for lunch alongside a green meadow where Ghulam leaped out to spread embroidered tablecloths, serving us a delicious meal on china dishes. Dad and Mom were exuberant. Later, we moored for the evening in a bowered cove where the cook prepared roast duck in mango sauce. Opposite us, someone had tethered a white stallion perfectly lit in the late evening sun. We encountered no other inhabitants. We slept comfortably under cozy silken quilts—a far cry from the utilitarian sleeping bags my parents still used back home. From start to finish, our experience seemed drawn from the Arabian Nights and a perfect celebration of Dad’s sixtieth birthday.
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