These photos capture the ancient and disappearing stepped wells in India.

Even if you stand in front of the huge and ancient staircase in India, it is easy to miss it. These buildings use spiral or zigzag stairs to sink to a cool and dark place on the ninth floor underground, where there is a pool of water. Once an important part of daily life in India, now wells have replaced them. Walls, vegetation and adjacent buildings have grown up and can be hidden. Victoria Lautmann, the author of "The Disappearing Ladder Wells in India", spent many years searching for these stepped wells.

Lautmann fell in love with stepped wells when he first went to India.

"My driver took me to this place, put me in a dusty place and said to me,' Go to that wall,'" Lautmann recalled. "I did it. This is just an unremarkable low concrete wall. When I looked through it, it was a shocking experience. The ground fell into a place that looked like an artificial crack. That's it,

"But what is shocking," lattmann continued, "is that I can't remember another experience overlooking the building and entering such a complicated man-made experience. This is really outrageous. This is the first experience.

During his subsequent trip to India, Lautmann discovered the stepped well and recorded it through photos and research.

Around 650 AD, people began to build stepped wells in western India. These stepped wells are mainly used as clean water sources, but they are also used as meeting places, temples and summer resorts. They can be simple spiral stairs, circular pools descending to the center, or busy maze stairs and columns made up of complex sketches drawn by M.C.Escher.

Moreover, Hinduism originated here, and the value of Stepwell has been mastered by the Mughal rulers since the early 1500s. Some Hindu inscriptions were smeared, but they allowed the building to continue, and even they could build their own buildings anywhere.

When Britain occupied India (inherited the Mughal dynasty), they thought the stepped wells were unsanitary and set out to create new water sources. Drilling and drilling became Monday, along with pumps and pipelines, making stepped wells obsolete. Most staircases in India have been abandoned. The last one was built in 1903.

In areas where there is no coordinated garbage removal, many abandoned stepped wells have become convenient pits, and garbage has been thrown into the pits (and is still being thrown into the pits). Some are claimed by wasps, mice, snakes, turtles, fish and mongooses.

You can't see how shabby, shabby, remote and dangerous these stepped wells are. "Lautmann said that I did all these things myself, forcing myself to slide down from the garbage dump for a thousand years and asking myself,' Why did you do this?' [... this is not suitable for timid people. Anyone who is afraid of heights, insects, snakes and dirt, and anyone who doesn't like them will feel very uncomfortable.

This is an invisible building everywhere. There are hundreds-perhaps more than a thousand-stepped wells in India and Pakistan. But in Lautmann, it is often found that people who live only a few blocks away from the stairwell simply don't know the existence of the stairwell. She included every detail described in the book in GPS coordinates, which was very helpful to her. You can also find online collaboration atlas here. Some stepped wells, including Rani ki Vav in Patan, Gujarat, are well-preserved famous tourist attractions, but most of them are unknown.

Lautmann has been a journalist for more than 25 years, focusing on art and culture. She got a master's degree in art history, worked in the Hirshhorn Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, and then began her journalism career. Almost every page has color photos, and Lautmann is not a professional photographer. "I bought these photos at Best Buy and took them with my broken camera," she said.

During my five-year regular trip to India, all the photos in this book have never been staged. Lautmann really grabbed the stairwell-it was often blocked by garbage and vines.

For me, the most important thing about them is that despite their conditions, the beauty and strength of these things run through, Lautmann said. "It is very important for me to show them in this situation, because I think if you raise your awareness, more people will see them. I hope more villages will take care of them and respect them.