Title: Ghar
Author: ANU KUMAR
Published by: Perimeter Editions
Printed in Melbourne
The debut book from Melbourne-based photographer Anu Kumar, Ghar documents the first time she returned to her birthplace of Kavi Nagar, India, since childhood. Just 21 at the time, Kumar felt adrift, discomfited by not knowing her place or identity in that context. She started taking photos as an exercise in learning how to be Indian. Shot over a period of five years, the soft gaze of Kumar’s images meanders between the rooms and courtyards of the family home and out onto the neighbouring streets, piecing together the symbolic and aesthetic markers of a personal and cultural heritage, as formal portraits give way to intimate scenes of daily tasks and familial rituals.
" I remember a feeling of discomfort; not knowing my place or who I was in that context. I began taking photos as an exercise in learning how to be Indian. It was a visual articulation of my curiosity, responding to my surroundings whilst hovering around my family as they would move through the day. "
Edited and sequenced during the period of COVID, Ghar also speaks to the enforced distance experienced by cross-cultural families, and the role of photographs as vessels for intimacy and connection
Title: This Golden Mile
Author: KAVI PUJARA
Kavi Pujara began to photograph the neighbourhood around Leicester’s Golden Mile as a way to reconnect with the city, its residents and his own past after 30 years of living in London. The resulting images form This Golden Mile which will be exhibited at Martin Parr Foundation in October to coincide with a book of the project published by Setanta Books.
‘This Golden Mile is not about the one-mile stretch of Melton Road that turns into Belgrave Road with its sari shops, Indian restaurants and jewellers. It’s about the arteries and veins that come from it, giving life to the parts of the neighbourhood away from the central commercial thoroughfare. This Golden Mile exists in the poetry of homes, temples and street corners; it’s down the alleys and through the gaps in steel fencing leading to crumbling industrial plots. This Golden Mile is both an entry point and an ending, the last mile of a long journey to Britain.
Title: Some kind of Heavenly Fire
Author: Maria Lax
“I’m from a small town in Northern Finland surrounded by a vast, sparsely populated wilderness. Most pass through the town on their way someplace else without ever knowing it was a hotspot for UFO sightings in the 1960’s. Unaware of this history myself, it wasn’t until I read my grandfather’s book that I learnt of the incredible stories of supernatural events, bravery and struggle against hardship in what is largely a barren land. Already suffering from dementia, he was unable to answer any of the questions I had so I went looking for the answers. I turned to the people who had seen the mysterious lights, to newspaper archives and my family’s photo albums from the era. The UFO sightings coincided with a time of great struggle for Northern Finland. People flooded from the countryside to the cities in search of jobs leaving abandoned houses scattered across this beautiful but harsh landscape. It’s no wonder that the UFO sightings embodied a fear of the future, the unknown and the inexorable shift in lifestyles and livelihoods going on around them. Some reacted to the mysterious lights with fear, some took them as a sign they were not alone.” - Maria Lax
Title: Flamboya
Author: Viviane Sassen
Published by: Contrasto
Designed by: Sybren Kuiper
Printed in Bologna
Viviane Sassen's first monograph, Flamboya brings together photos from various trips to Africa. Although Sassen grew up in the Netherlands, she lived in Kenya from the ages of two to five as her father worked in a local hospital. Her first return to the continent was in 2001 at the age of 29. Flamboya includes primarily portraits that Sassen made collaboratively with her subjects, some spontaneous and others performative. Some pages in the book have a smaller width, setting up interesting relationships between the images. As it happens with memories or thoughts, photographs are not isolated: they form a fluid stream of associations and connections. Sassen describes the logic of the presentation "as a kind of ordered chaos".
"I never work in series; I rather build collections of related images. If you combine photographs in a particular way, you can tell stories that go further than an isolated image.” The men and women in her photographs are in a sense also combinations of images; they are more compositions than individuals."