The Long Way Home

Duncan, also known as Bob Duncan, left Los Angeles in 2015 after living there since the age of 18. What followed was a nomadic journey across continents. He travelled extensively, living in Kenya, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Mexico, the UK, the Netherlands and Portugal. Yet one place continues to call him back: Kerala, where a pandemic lockdown held him for nearly two years.

At 72, Duncan still carries his camera—a companion since age 12—as he walks the streets of Fort Kochi. His relationship with Kerala began unexpectedly in 2017 when he was hired to photograph a fashion show in Kochi. At the time, India wasn’t part of any long-term plan for him.

“About a decade ago, I was running an Airbnb rental property in Los Angeles,” he recalls. “My first guest was Kapil, a businessman from Delhi. One day, he invited me to India and suggested I work as a motivational speaker.” Kapil urged him to speak about Duncan’s self-published Amazon book, ‘You’re Freer Than You Think’, which described the experiences that had led Duncan to reassess his life. Encouraged by the idea, he relocated to India in 2019. “Before that,” he says, “I’d never seriously considered India.”

Delhi proved overwhelming. “I wasn’t prepared for the scale of the city or the culture shock,” Duncan says. “But people were generous.” One evening, noticing a wedding tent across from his hotel, he approached with his camera to ask permission to photograph. The security guards took him to the bride’s father. “I had barely explained that I was from Los Angeles when he said, ‘Please come in, my friend.’ That’s when India began to get under my skin.”

Two years later, Duncan returned to Kochi. “That was when I fell in love with another India entirely,” he says. He’s returned whenever possible since. After several setbacks with motivational speaking, Kochi gradually became his base. During one of his visits, accommodation plans fell through, and he landed at a Fort Kochi homestay instead. Already short on money, his phone slipped from his hands, shattering on impact and erasing all his contacts. “I was suddenly cut off from everyone I knew.”

One morning, he noticed people walking past the homestay and followed them to a beach overlooking the Arabian Sea. A small crowd had gathered to watch the sunrise. There, he met college students practising conversational English. When they learned he was a speaker, they invited him to address their class. The next day, Duncan found himself speaking to a large group of students, sharing one of the experiences from his book.

While public speaking had been his original intention, photography began to take precedence. “During Holi celebrations, the colours are washed away with water,” Duncan says. “I became interested in that brief instant before it disappears and began timing my shots around it.” As the word spread, more people came to be photographed.
In Feb 2020, Duncan held his first exhibition at Kashi Art Café in Fort Kochi. A month later, the pandemic shut down global travel. Duncan remained in Fort Kochi throughout the lockdowns. “While the world seemed in upheaval, my days were quiet—walks, conversations, and endless time to observe.”

During this period, he documented life under lockdown. “One day, when the only outing allowed was for groceries, I photographed a man peeping out from his window at Fort Kochi—a picture capturing all the emotions of lockdown.” The photograph was in black and white, a medium Duncan favours for its subtle gradations of light and shadow.

“I’ve always been passionate about film noir imagery,” he says. “Film noir was a style used in Hollywood films of the 1940s and 50s, reflecting post-war disillusionment through black-and-white visuals and complex narratives,” he says.

Changes to visa regulations in late 2022 required Duncan to leave India, but Fort Kochi remains central to his life and work. 2026 marks his seventh year of returning. “The stillness of the pandemic years is gone,” he observes. “Kochi is busy again.”

Though he arrived in India intending to speak about his book, Duncan credits Kerala — and Fort Kochi in particular — with clarifying his direction. “Photography became the work I had always imagined,” he says. He now maintains an Instagram presence and plans to sell his photographs online as posters.

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