A few nights ago, I had the the chance to see a presentation by one of India's most important contemporary photographers, Dileep Prakash. He has a stunning series of color photographs of Anglo-Indians currently touring Europe's finest galleries. In a few months, a new exhibition opens at Photoink in Delhi. This time his subject is the boarding schools of India in black and white.

On July 26th, 2010 Dileep Prakash offered a preview of these images at a reception high above the waters of San Francisco bay.

We saw the photographs on a wide-screen digital TV - good, but hardly enough to do them justice. Still there was not a false image among them. As he explained his methods and the time he spent understanding the Anglo-Indian community, one understood why Prakash's photographs were so good. The depth of vision, the careful arrangement of subject and intelligence that each photograph represented was perfect. I was amazed at the Anglo-Indian families with an albumen portrait of a European forefather still hanging on the kitchen wall. Every composition showed real sensitivity to what the image could tell about these living remnants of the Raj, relaying context and character across a vast gulf of experience.

After a short break came the images of Indian boarding schools. The photographer had just come from New York, where he was printing them on silver gelatin for the October opening.

These were dark, moody images and represented many of his own memories of Mayo College in Ajmere. They were devoid of people. Instead of an easy identification of each school's landmarks, these were universal images of deep corridors, classrooms and the old skeletons that literally still inhabit them. Those in the audience who had attended similar colleges quickly recognized their own experiences in them. Every photograph wrung a world of meaning out of a single well-composed shot.

When the exhibition opens in Delhi, it is bound to be a great success. Yet the images offer anything but easy nostalgia to the graduates who flock to see them.

A final surprise was the tonic of a third series. Dileep Prakash is experimenting with honeymooners, the passage of time, the illusion of copying. This time the setting is a hill-station, where so many marriages begin, yet another artifact of British times. He did not want to say too much, letting the images and the dance of our eyes on them do the talking. These were side-by-side images, where the urge to compare bit by bit is irresistible. Each image was a pleasurable puzzle.

Clearly, the many years that are going into photographic endeavors by Dileep Prakash are yielding an incredible body of work. His is a photography of the Raj that is still very much around us. What I like best is that he does not push images to reveal more than they can, does not stretch his craft to wow you, but lets the real seep assuredly into what we see through his eyes.