CAMBRIDGE — A man stands with his back to the camera, looking look at the sea. It’s the photograph that begins Sooni Taraporevala’s “Parsis, The Zoroastrians of India,” which runs at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts through Dec. 20.

The title of the photograph is “The man in the sola hat.” It might just as well be “Elbows on parade.” There are the man’s own, held in close to his body. And there’s another, rather more intriguing one, bare and belonging to someone just outside the frame. Jutting into the picture, it’s like an arrow directing the viewer back to the man in the hat.