Upside Down

Ajay Sharma

Each time I see the Upside-Down Man
Standing in the water,
I look at him and start to laugh,
Although I shouldn’t oughtter.
For may be in another world
Another time
Another town,
May be HE is right side up
And I am upside down.

-Shel Silverstein

The act of ‘reflecting’ can be seen as casting back a light or heat, mirroring, or giving back or showering an image. It can be a state of being reflected in this way in the form of an image, a representation, a counterpart. Yet, it could also mean fixing of thoughts on something, a careful consideration or even an unfavourable remark or observation. Reflection can have a scientific explanation, a visual explanation, a conceptual as well as a philosophical explanation.

This year the monsoon and the rains brought natural calamity that was extremely devastating. As the monsoon gradually subsided, it left traces on wet and dry areas simultaneously. At this point, I became interested in documenting my surroundings, and I was especially drawn to reflections of images on partially wet and partially dry surfaces around me. I found these reflections to be unusually revealing, as well as bewildering! These photographs focus on reflections of mundane surroundings that I have been interacting with and capturing every day. The photographs are my ways of seeing the ordinary with my inner camera. Through these images, I have zoomed in my ‘inner lens’ to capture/ document/ celebrate/ reveal the ordinary.

The subsiding rain left traces of another ‘reflection’ in me, that was otherwise submerged in the devastating calamity that it had unleashed with it.

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