Nazrein utha, fly over, chembur, Shair-shairi by Smita Rajan

fly over, chembur:

Nazrein utha zindagi ki daud me/
jis raah ko dhuundhte rahe/
nazrein jhukin toh woh apne hi kadmo pe thi!
–Smita Rajan

Govandi to Vashi

vashi station

Gurgaon/Chembur/Deonar

Epicenter, Gurgaon

Punjab Wadi Bus Stand, Deonar

Mumbai

Sky streaks

Mumbai photos

Diffuser

Udaipur, Bangalore, Mumbai photos

Colaba

Composite Photos

Train to Virar

These photos seem to me to have come together quite by chance, but then they also emerged from patterns of behavior and forms of style, against the backdrop of flows of people, traffic, capital, information. In India today these patterns are emerging through a new ecology of sensation. But I make no claim for these photographs as “art.” And yet clearly the history of perspectivalism, the dominance of representationalism in the engagement with a living multiplicity is at stake for me in creating these images. There is an accretion of information some of which coheres, much of which does not, but each image has a certain duration at different scales of perception, a noncoinciding resonant unity, a unity-in-multiplicity is what I hope to continue through the photography (mutating affect, not representation). An ecology of sensation meeting its cliché: Bollywood meets graphic novels at the back of a rikshaw, Agra’s Mughal-era oriental(ized) stone work turning topological and dimensional (is it less or more racist? to what extent is the question relevant to what it does?), the ferris wheel on Juhu beach, the weighing machine at the local station. This time that I have been able to spend here in India thanks to a research grant from the Fulbright foundation, has allowed me to research the materiality of the ecology of sensation of mobile phones and experiment in forms of creatively engaging this ecology.

Urbz Mashup Mumbai

Nul Bazaar for Urbz Mashup:

Edward Talkies, Dhobi Talab, Kalbadevi, Mumbai:

Be Like Water / Edward Talkies (Kalbadevi, Mumbai)