my india trip ended somewhat abruptly: i had been debating whether to attend my cousin’s wedding and spent several days agonizing over the decision. one day, i woke up and decided it was time to come home; i called my mom and shared the news, which almost instantly allowed the rest of my family to colour me back into a wedding from which i had been unceremoniously crossed out. regret started at about the instant that i hung up the phone; my timing is always just a bit too late on things.
the transition was lightning quick. one day i was in a peaceful village in the foothills of the himalaya. the next i was in a hotel room the size of a shoebox in 42 degree delhi, with one more day to an arrival in the dubai airport shopping extravaganza. then london. then toronto. it all hit before i could even take a second to think.
i’m more than three months removed from that 72 hours of culture shock, but i’m still looking for an appropriate way to close my trip. what’s left for me – besides the memories, which is a cliche that i’ve learned lasts only about three months – is about 14,000 photos, 14,000 stories and memories and people and places.
so photo management has become my way of trying to dissect and understand the depth of the experience that i had in india. i’ve been able to stretch this self-exploration into several full-fledged projects, although at this point the only completed project that i began was a plan to decorate an overwhelmingly white wall in my overwhelmingly white room. that success, and the positive feedback i’ve received from everyone who interacts with my work, has encouraged me to dream a little bit bigger.
toronto is well known for its collection of art galleries; the contact toronto photography festival, which takes place each may, is the largest photography event in north america. accordingly, i’m working on organizing a subset of my images into a coherent theme in order to shop them around and get some gallery space. i’m (necessarily) pushing myself to think outside the scope of something organized along the lines of “these are my best photos”, despite how much that type of theme might speak to me.
this is turning out to be a difficult process of self-examination. what was i thinking when i took this photo?, i find myself asking. what was the theme in this week in january versus this one in april? what kind of music was i listening to? what do these images say about the places that i was seeing? more importantly, what do these images say about me and the experience that i went through?
this line of questioning only raises deeper and more significant answers about me, who i am, what i represent, what i dream about. but it’s difficult to confront coupling these private thoughts with a very public exposition. i’m caught asking how much of myself i want to share. of course, the real answer is all, but that ignores the follow-up question: how much are others truly interested to receive?
so what would you do? do you stay true to yourself and put out the show that you want? or would you restrict your interpretation of your art to something basic, something like “this is how people in india live”. the latter seems like a grade 4 science experiment.
(and if you needlessly point out that i’m asking these very personal questions in the [first entry] on a very public medium, perhaps you’ll realize that the question has already been answered, and that now the decision making becomes less about self-reflection and more about, well, confidence…)
