Between 1978 and 1989, American photographer Mitch Epstein made eight trips to India capturing its sights and experiences through thousands of photographs while collaborating with then-wife Mira Nair,  shooting her documentary films and working closely on her iconic works Salaam Bombay and Mississippi Masala. Epstein hasn’t returned to India since 1990, but the distance from that time and its heady  experiences has granted him an opportunity for introspective reflection and detachment.

In his introduction to In India, Epstein writes about how his own position as an insider and outsider in the country became clear as he photographed a group of fully clothed Indians watching bikini-clad white women sitting on top the wall of a hotel at Juhu Beach in Bombay. “It was, for me, a moment of both detachment and identification,” he writes. “I was neither a western tourist nor an Indian, I was none of the people I was photographing; yet, I could somewhat identify with them all.” Pics by Mitch Epstein/Courtesy of Steidl Verlag