In Mughal Art, the ornament is seen in forms such as carving in wood, brick and stone, stone relief, mosaic and tile work, stucco, trellis work, and stone inlay culminating in the jewel-like pietra dura ornament (using semi precious stone), seen most notably on the Taj Mahal. It is the hand of the draftsman that gives Islamic architecture its lasting finish and a kaleidoscopic quality with a promise of new insights every time that one can return to again and again.

Islamic architectural ornament is seen in three aniconic forms: floral/ vegetal, geometrical, and epigraphic/ calligraphic. These forms are freely (sometimes endlessly) arrayed on most Islamic structures, where the ornament is sometimes functional, and sometimes decorative. Yet these decorations suggest a deeper dimension. As they vary endlessly, they attest the inexhaustible richness of Allah's creation and are frequently interpreted in a symbolic religions sense as references to paradise and the Creator himself.
In the Islamic architecture of India, two-dimensional geometrical surface design reached the zenith of artistic development. In Sultanate or Mughal architecture, geometry is used to articulate building elements in all materials: mosaic, stone, stucco, wood, ceramics, all displaying the considerable efforts and skills of the artisans.
The Mughals were fascinated with vegetation and used it profusely in architecture and textiles for decoration. This obsession with vegetal forms existed in the decorative Indian psyche right from the beginning, even before the Mughal reign. Maurya and Shunga period sculptures are the biggest repositories of floral and faunal decoration. The important aspect of Mughal decoration that gained wide popularity is the amalgamation of Persian and Indo-European floral types as decorative motifs.

In the use of vegetal and floral forms, there is a nexus of associations that unite foliage, garden and paradise. Akbar's tomb at Sikandra, or the Taj Mahal at Agra have accompanying inscriptions that support the conclusion that the two perpendicularly arranged water channels dividing the rectangular area of the water garden into 4 quadrants was intended as a reference to the 4 rivers of paradise. The paradisiacal imagery is found in particular, in the buildings of the Mughal court. Their love of naturalism in flowers, for example, is reflected in the almost botanical accuracy of the flowers depicted in the Diwans in the Red Forts of Agra and Delhi and in the gardens - those for pleasure as well as the ones arc-und their tombs.

These elements, when used, do not give the impression of predetermined organization, but emerge on an as-needed basis. As Islam spread over vast areas, in Asia, many of these decorations would have been carried out by native craftsmen not well versed in the Islamic/Arabic traditions, and they have tended to interpret these devices artistically or visually rather than for the connotations that they convey to a Muslim devotee. Though these craftsmen worked within the Islamic milieu, as in the Mughal period under Muslim supervision, one sees a much freer interpretation of Islamic forms in buildings in India, where the larger workforce would have been non-Muslim.

Yashwant Pitkar's flowers are an appreciation of the architecture of Islam in India at a level removed from the formal, an appreciation of the articulated surface. He presents architecture as a bouquet of craftsmanship, as an enduring romance with shape and stone, in its unending variations. An architect first, then a photographer, Pitkar's images reflect his love and admiration for the buildings of Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, which he captures in the way he knows best, up close and personal. Here, his focus on a microcosmic reality in the surface of architecture is seen blown up large to reveal a macrocosm of depth and detail, replicating a elf-similarly with the power of fractals. At this scale, the photographer and the artisan come together in a palimpsest of aesthetic unity.
Seen here are the desires of the royal patrons who built these monuments, of the master builders and of the jeweller-like artisans, all of whom sought to achieve oneness with the Creator, and the work is an attestation of the Inexhaustible richness of creation. The flora is symbolic as a reference to paradise and to Allah Himself. The plays of multiple superimposed levels and of patterns that continue beyond the photographer's frame represent both the infinite as well as the fundamental unity of all things.
Pitkar's unique gaze, like that of a Mughal miniature painter, or a Company artist, shuts out the dominating forms, and carries the viewer right into the aesthetics of surface. The images work at a deeper philosophical level. The viewer is made aware of the inner meaning of aesthetic representation, the different ways of inducing the immeasurable. The plays of multiple superimposed levels and of patterns continue beyond the photographer's frame suggesting the infinite.