bangaloreans - private diaries in fragments

installation

photography and sound

2008 - 2009

solo show 1shanthiroad studio - gallery - Bangalore - August 2009.

For several years I have been pursuing a project of photography in India. The haphazard display of posters which fills the urban space is my field of predilection.

The posters that are stuck never remain whole for very long; they end up getting partly torn or are covered up by new ones. It is at that point that fragments of faces, of bodies as well as profiles begin to emerge out of the mass of colours and typography or the exposed walls.
These are the subjects of my photos.

With the passage of time, I have created in this fashion what I have named my collection of fragmented portraits: a gallery of portraits of urban men and women whose common point is that they are “multi-layered” individuals.

These portraits, which are “in my own way” a homage to the great Raymond Hains, seem to reveal to the naked eye who these men and women are beyond their appearances.
The fragments of posters superimposed one over the other, are like their multiple skins, their multiple ways of being, their multiple selves, the missing pieces are like the witnesses of the identity metamorphosis through which they have passed.

In complete contrast to the agitation of the city, they are frozen in an expression and a posture. It is as if time had suddenly stopped only for them, thinking it necessary to give them time to ponder.

From that was born the idea of this creation.

Nine ordinary middle class Bangaloreans in their 30's have chosen a « fragmented portrait » they identify with.

Nine, "neuf" in french, a word that also means new, like the new bangalorean identity emerging.

In the style of a personal diary they expose their state of mind of the moment without embellishment or artifice, in English and in the first person.

These inner voices, and intimate monologues reveal who they are and how they live with their composite identities.

The installation

The background sound is a familiar one: the urban cacophony. If one shuts one’s eyes one would believe oneself to be in the middle of Bangalore at the rush hour.

In this space, these 9 photographic prints are hung. A headphone is attached to each of these portraits.

The public is invited to penetrate the intimacy of these men and women; as a doctor with his stethoscope listening to his patient’s heartbeats, each one can collect in his hear the intimacies of these strangers.

November 2008

Audio R.