Commemorating the Visit
Jayeti Bhattacharya
Recently, I found a packet of old photographs which was left out in dust on top of a cupboard. While going through the huge pile of photographs, I was amazed to discover a personal archive which has a deep connection with my roots and the identity. With different stories embedded within, I realised that these photographs could explain my existence. I started collecting from more such personal archives of close relatives who were also part of these photographs but never talked about it.
While relooking at the photographs, I wished to create my own visual interpretation of the ambience which these photographs must have been a part of. As the family shifted its base from other side of the border to several new addresses and finally settled in Kolkata, it had a number of visitors on a regular basis including relatives who came to visit the city or stayed for a medical check up, or as a transit stop before moving to the other part of the country or for their own shift to the city of Kolkata and so on. For me, these photographs are a celebration of those moments which were lived by these people. These photographs carry the character of the known and the unknown. Known seems to be those people whom I know personally and unknown seems to be those whom I know through the words of the known. I feel a relationship grows over here between the known and the unknown. The known plays the pivotal role in conveying the moments and the lives lived with the unknown.
The photographs trap different layers of relationship status and the land within which they were captured. The time here becomes ephemeral to me. I feel it is so as through the photographs I can peep in the moment and the situation. Hence, I wanted to express the importance of time and relationship through it by questioning if these relations carried the same affection or they just shared the same surface of the photograph. I came across different kinds of relationships in these photographs which can be seen getting objectified today. So, this personal archive became an entry point for me to connect to the past while leading a way towards the unpredictable future. Using old photographs, I wanted to create a new visual language that captured this ambivalent situation.
These photographs make me think: what if we were to live in a land of nature without the box structures around us (houses), or humans were to live all alone and survive by themselves or animals were to live inside the box and humans to roam around? On the contrary, humans are entangled by numerous relationships throughout their lives. Do these relationships continue to be the memorable ones, or are these reduced to a pile of old photographs lying in the dust to be found by future generations? In a way, the essence of the present is being moved away from the present but continues to live forever.
