Photographer Ranjit Oberoi was shooting street life all over India when a curious figure kept leaping into his frame wherever he went. It was the street dog, the quintessential inhabitant of every Indian address, from the holy shores of Varanasi to the beaches of Diu, from urban doorsteps to tribal landscapes. “The moment this dawned on me, I made the street dogs of India my photo models. My quest has always been to shoot a beautiful frame and now I found that street dogs added character and force to my pictures,” says the 46-year-old at his exhibition at the India International Centre (Annexe).

Oberoi has defiantly steered away from “using the stray as a symbol of poverty, pity or pathos”. Instead, there’s humour: a puppy at India Gate watching the rush of vendors and visitors and suspense: a full-sized mutt sizing up a kitten that saunters past it, yawning. And there was perfect composition—the contoured forms of a dog and a pilgrim at sunrise on the banks of the Ganga in Varanasi. “The dogs in my photographs are aesthetic figures,” explains Oberoi as he points to two images, of Mumbai and Diu, in which a single dog sits on the beach. The sea in the background is an endless expanse and the beach is beautifully rippled, but it is the figure of the dog that completes the effect.

The project has occupied Oberoi for the past nine years, a fact that surprises him the most “because ever since I was bitten by a dog as a youngster, I’ve maintained a respectful distance from them,” he says. “At the same time, I don’t condone people who throw stones at strays or run them over. Street dogs are present in 90 per cent of the country’s inhabited regions. If man starts living in a place, a dog is sure to follow,” he says.

Oberoi learned the finer points of photography at Triveni Kala Sangam after graduating in Buddhist Studies and Hindi literature from Delhi University. A freelancer, who shoots for publishing houses, he has two books lined up for release later this year.