A selection of photos from Auroville across four decades (1980-2020)

John Mandeen came to Pondicherry, South India, from California, in October 1968 as a young man of 24 and was accepted by the Mother as an Ashramite of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He helped set up the first screen printing workshop in the Ashram Press. All birthday cards with the Mother's symbol in those days were screen printed there besides book covers.He took up photography in the late 1970s and got seriously into it by the 80's, documenting Auroville in all its aspects very extensively, including the Matrimandir.Since 1980 he was part of the Prisma Team with Franz and Tim and they did all the publicity work for Aurelec. In 1994 he took photos for the first Auroville Exhibition at the visitor's centre which was updated several times over the years. He was the photographer for the Auroville Today team till writers with snap and shoot cameras took over the job. He taught photography at the school in Aspiration school to many Auroville kids, all adults now, some of who ended up becoming photographers themselves.Most of Prisma’s initial publications, like the architecture books, carry his photos. Later he was involved in doing pre-press work for other Prisma projects as well as projects of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. Recently he was working with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives on a new book they are bringing out.He left for his onward journey on July 7th 2024.