Mahendra Bakle is an Indian photographer whose images capture the rich cultural diversity of his home country and beyond.

In late 1999, an archivist at Indiana University made an extraordinary discovery. Among items marked for disposal were dusty suitcases filled with thousands of stunning color slides, some dating back nearly seven decades. These 14,500 images were the life's work of Charles W. Cushman, an Indiana University alumnus and photographer, who had left the collection to the university after his death in 1972.