Photo Story: In Their Homes

When we travel, we may look to get away from the mundane and yet we develop a different sense of familiarity every time, in the period we are in another place. Today, things must become familiar and mundane quicker than ever before.

A first look at Vinay Mahidhar’s current suite of images from In their Homes may come through as casual travellers’ romanticised view of the other. But look more carefully; it slowly reveals the artist’s quiet anxiety of being an outsider to the situation in each frame. Back in his studio, he carefully reconstructs that sense of melancholy and a natural longing for home with a simple strategy of pairing. The restraint with the colors, while an exercise in pairing, brings forth a sense of coldness and the undertones of an occidental atmosphere and sound.

Sudarshan Shetty is a contemporary indian artist, and has exhibited widely in india and abroad

The twin pictures refer back to each other in search of a relationship between possibly different worlds. The split in the frame allows for a narrative that stretches beyond the photographer’s framing and thus challenges the very act of ‘framing’ itself, however, in a manner that each pairing belongs to that reconstructed, singular world.

These narratives, as they were, play themselves out without a logical resolution within each frame. Thus a narrative, that is subjective to each persons reading of it, spills on to other pictures in the suite, suggesting continuity, and yet they end up without a conclusion. Each time one tries to grasp a rhythm to that narrative, it slips off the fingers and eludes a sense of linearity, as there is no logical beginning or an end. The virtue of these images lies in the fact that they constitute an open narrative realm of their own, which may find resonances in your own experience of having travelled, physically or otherwise.

Vinay Mahidhar is a seasoned photographer with an interest in film work