Host (Working Title)

This project questions the idea of representation and gaze, of what a "city" is- the imagined versus the actual. Creating a visual language that is unique to the project, having codes and signifiers that are open to interpretation.

ARTIST STATEMENT 

As photographs have become coded in the collective memory/imagination in our present hyper visual reality, the mind has been trained to decode and read images in a specific manner, eventually building pre-existing narratives around it. This project questions the idea of representation and gaze, of what a “city” is- the imagined versus the actual. I am trying to work with a visual language that is unique to the project, having codes and signifiers that are open to interpretation. 

I have framed the subjects, spaces, landscapes and still lives in a fragmented manner to strip them off any identity and utility, be it social or economic. The idea is to engage the viewer into new readings of something familiar which appears unfamiliar when presented in such a manner. It could be any city. By choosing not to use a wide focal length to photograph historically important buildings and urban landscapes which define the city, and function as codes and signs, I seek to bring into question established notions and standards of what is “urban” and what constitutes a “city.”

For the past three years I have been walking the streets, lanes and alleys of Mumbai and its suburbs, trying to document the energy that the city has to offer. I realised that the city is divided into different pockets, each having its own life and character. After repeated visits, these unknown places opened up to me for a dialogue, I got familiar with the routine of each of these places and when they come to life or not. The anticipation of some thing to “happen”, an event to occur in one of these areas forced me to never miss a chance to visit them. These places became a living, breathing being for me, not just sites working as a backdrop for action, rather they are active independent beings of their own. 

I saw people going about their daily routines day after day, people who were once unfamiliar and strangers were now faces that I would come across almost daily, and I became someone familiar to them as well. I realised how this helped in building a sense of trust based purely on visual recollection, no verbal exchange or interaction, and challenged the long held belief that all are strangers in a city and that one can get lost in the crowd. 

This daily practise required from me to enter a cycle of routine that is followed by most inhabitants of this city and I also became a part of it, voluntarily. Rather than being an outsider, looking at things from the sides as an observer, I tried to become a participant to explore this project, to document how citizens navigate, gaze and relate to the city.