Among Gaddis, men call women their better- half. Still, in this Himalayan Dev Bhoomi, the patriarch of our society, cunningly casts the ideology of neglect, denial, suppression, and marginalization of women in the mold of destiny and providence, which ultimately turns into a cultural hegemony. The article investigates women’s roles as working; being political; growing; making significant choices; questioning, and finding viable answers and solutions. The article analyses traditional images of women, myths, and stereotypes about their roles, needs, attributes, and potential. In this article, I use visual anthropological methods inspired by Sara Pink’s work (personal and archival photographs, videos, illustrations, etc.) to explore how the Gaddi women identify themselves, how they spend their daily lives in the Himalayas, and how their sense of personhood and selfhood is influenced by various spaces and their culture and ritual constructions. Through visual methods by Malcolm Collier, I tried to represent these invisible women who were pushed to the margins and sidelined in social history and were mainly seen through the masculine, colonial, and tourist gaze. I have here adopted visual anthropology concepts to understand the blindness toward the marginalized, invisible Gaddi women. It helped me move beyond treating visuals as mere objects to unmute the voices. I have tried to go beyond the “factual” visual data by interpreting the contexts, experiences, and emotions expressed in those visuals. The photographs helped me understand the social and cultural meanings attached to activities that the women in the visuals are involved with. The diverse roles and attitudes towards Gaddi women have also been explored: her as a Goddess, Shaman, artist, athlete, politician, activist, etc., from the colonial to global era through images. The visuals thus uncovered the otherwise hidden and forgotten histories and personal experiences of these women from the Himalayas.
