At the Sufi Kathak Foundation’s Qawwali Photo Project, one is greeted by evocative photographs of qawwals performing at various shrines across the country. From the Nizami Brothers at the Hazrat Nizamuddin in Delhi, Qawwal Ustad Ranjhan Ali at Dargah Hazrat Bannay Shah in Amritsar, to Qawwal Sarvjeet Tamta at the Shaheen Bagh protest – these pictures document the lives of the ‘faceless’ practitioners of this 700-year-old artform. Curated by the founder of Sufi Kathak Foundation, Manjari Chaturvedi, the exhibition attempts to underscore the importance of remembering these artists who have been largely forgotten. “Had it not been for famous qawwals such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Bollywood movies and Coke Studio, the artform might have gone largely unrecognised,” says Chaturvedi. “This is because qawwali is considered to be a casual artform. Even though it is popular, nobody knows what qawwalis are, who are qawwals, what they sing about; there were no academics related to it. There’s only one book on qawwali written by Regula Qureshi,” she adds. It is a first-of-its-kind effort to document the qawwals’ intoxicating performances, their lives and association with the Sufi shrines where they perform. Chaturvedi has been working with qawwals for 25 years and documenting their lives since then. “While documenting their personal history, they would mention their grandfathers who were also great qawwals. When I would ask them for a photograph, they would produce a little passport-size picture used in ration cards. I would think that a legend of a man is forgotten because he wasn’t documented. I realised we are not even documenting the qawwals of today. Then we started the Qawwali Photo Project to document qawwals,” said Chaturvedi. The exhibition, which will go on till Sunday at the India International Centre, features photographs by Dinesh Khanna, Leena Kejriwal and Mustafa Quraish. Khanna documents the important shrines of Delhi, Amritsar, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Ajmer, while Quraishi’s pictures tell stories of Dewa Sharif and Safipur and explores the Shaheen Bagh resistance at Delhi. Kejriwal captures the women qawwali performers such as Chancal Bharti who break the barriers of a largely androcentric tradition. “The images are of practitioners with their families, in their everyday lives and in their interaction with audiences and the pulsating connection of energy between them. The qawwals become the voice of the prayers of the hundreds of devotees that throng the shrine, seeking grace. With this project, we seek to bring forth interesting perspectives as captured through the mind and lens, with respect to the cultural and social dimensions of the art form that unfold like pages from a visual story,” Chaturvedi.