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In Renaissance portraiture, animals were often placed alongside women as coded symbols of virtue, fidelity, and domesticity. The inclusion of an ermine, a dog, or a bird operated as a visual shorthand, collapsing identity into allegory and reinforcing ideas of purity, loyalty, or fertility. These carefully staged compositions offered a way of fixing meaning onto the body, binding it to ideals larger than itself.
Conceptual fashion and fine art photographer Navin Kumar’s Rituals of the Untamed approaches this legacy from a different vantage point. Drawing from his influences — ranging from the stark theatricality of Helmut Newton and the raw intimacy of Nan Goldin, to the chiaroscuro of classical painting — Navin constructs images that blur the lines between reality and the surreal. His South Indian cultural background, the contrasts of urban life, and the rhythms of music also feed into his sensibility, creating a visual language that is rich with subtext.
For Navin, the body is not a passive canvas for symbolic meaning but a site where ritual and rebellion can collide. “Through this series, I wanted to unravel the tension between vulnerability and power, showing how the body itself becomes both a site of tradition and a force of resistance,” he explains. The photographs embody this vision. A figure in a red dress, adorned with temple jewelry and bangles, holds a rooster close to her face and chest. At times the bird seems an extension of her body, at others it confronts the viewer directly. The gaze of human and animal interlock, shifting between intimacy and defiance.
The rooster itself is loaded with associations like ritual sacrifice, virility, and vigilance. Paired with the bold red of the dress and the adorned body, it becomes a partner in dialogue. Each frame offers a sublime juxtaposition crafting what Kumar describes as “imagery that feels raw yet poetic — a dialogue between culture, body, and symbolism that is at once intimate and unapologetically bold.”
What emerges is a confrontation with the contradictions of identity. By reclaiming symbolic forms and re-situating them within a contemporary visual vocabulary, 'Rituals of the Untamed' reclaims expression in its most primal form through a language of contrasts.
Follow Navin here.
