Here and/or There

Is it possible to be in two places at once?

At many times in our lives, nostalgia sets in as we reminisce about the people, places, and memories that made an impact on us. We try to retain meaningful images of the same within our minds to the best of our ability. Yet, our memory can be a beautifully unreliable narrator.

As a college student, I moved from New Delhi to New York at the age of 18. There was always something nomadic within me, as I never wanted to stay in one place forever. Yet, as I now straddle between the places, there comes a feeling of becoming fragmented, as I leave a part of myself to move on to my next venture. Creating a life for myself away from what I knew as home for almost two decades made me realize that I am and always will be between two (or more) worlds. I now have two homes, feel connected to two cultural landscapes, and try to balance the bridge between them in my heart.

Through this experimental series, I translated the visual layers of time I create and store in my mind into the mechanics of my film camera. Shot in two different countries, on one roll of film, this project represents the surrealism of embracing the multiplicity of our experiences. The camera recreates the ability of the mind to retain memories from multiple locations in the form of double exposures. Then, it juxtaposes our encounters in a cumulative manner to form thoughts, or in this case, photographs.

This technical practice undergone in this project was spontaneous and fascinating, as I had to challenge my memory to record and remember compositions over the span of two months across both ends of the world. These photos ask you to look closer to understand whether you are indeed, ‘Here and/or There’. This series will live as a growing collection of the palimpsests of our perception with an aim to provide a new perspective on the way we shape our reality.