ACHCHA by Jeff Boudreau

This book is a collaboration with photographer Jeff Boudreau.

'This project came about from a long term collaboration with seya. and finding ourselves traveling around India early last year. We spent time up north at the golden temple in Amritsar, hours and hours on dirt roads in the west Bengal region, hiked in the early morning light of the tea fields of Munnar, canoed the backwaters of Munroe Island, walked the long beaches of Kerala and fought our way through markets in Delhi.

We met, spoke with, and photographed many of the artisans who work in fabric, those who use tea leaves and old vegetables as colours for dyeing and visited an atelier where they extract the golden silk from the Assam silk moth. We also had the pleasure of meeting many of the locals who were living in the villages we stayed in - we stumbled upon a group of boys who were returning from their karate lessons, our canoe driver took us to a working cashew farm in his local village, and our home stay hosts included us in a traditional night parade. It was totally immersive ; full of new landscapes, food, music, people and easily the busiest part of the world either of us had seen.

Having gone through the images to be used within the next two seasons lookbooks, I felt we should continue and show more of what we’d seen. Keiko and I agreed it would be best if we invited people to look at a lot more.

The title is a little nod to our friend and guide who helped us on the trip, Mr Harjeet Sood, who could always be heard speaking on the phone repeating the word ‘achcha.’ while there are multiple meanings for this phrase, ultimately it’s used to express ‘agreement’ or ‘understanding’ and we felt it best summed up our experience with the land, people and hospitality of India.' — Jeff Boudreau

Published by Seya.

Edited by Jeff Boudreau

Book Design by Eric Pillault