This is Home

As a photographer, I view my work as an act of witness rather than as an act of observation, interaction or creation. I do not believe a photograph merely exists just to tell a story, everything has a story, I believe it exists to communicate, express and convey.

This series is a part of an ongoing body of work made from a collection of photographs taken from 2024 in the neighbourhoods and surroundings areas of Imphal region, through it I try to explore the mundane and the daily in a fragile and shifting place where conditions and circumstances have been shaping the ordinary lives of people of Manipur, it's environments and how it defines normalcy in the collective society affected by the ongoing armed conflict which engulfed the state and informally caused an apartheid among the residing communities based on the lines of ethnicity.
It focuses on authentic routines and everyday life, candid interactions, and honest encounters of incidents as life and as a part of a troubled society rather than hunting for something for a news cycle.
The conflict which began in May 2023 initially between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities in their dominated regions have now spilled over to the Naga communities in the hills after a brief pause, contending and challenging over control and administration in the hill region through dominance, arms and power.
The waves of escalations and incidents carry over and propagate in all directions irrespective of sides and affecting the society as a whole. This photographic project will record the afterlives of violence of the ordinary and the affected, not merely as a site of conflict, but as a lived world shaped by instability, resilience and the struggle to live among a normal world as an impaired and challenged society.
A part of this project documents the stability/instability, certainty/uncertainty, and transformation it brings to a society slowly, gradually in quite. how it has impacted everyday lives.
Rather than focusing purely on external hardship, these images seek to capture resilience, the relationship between humans and society, and the human dignity found within changing environments. Working in black-and-white film as a medium for my photography, I mostly utilize natural/available light and the happenings in the ordinary daily lives and places around my immediate neighborhood and regions to construct images of an ordinary life here.

Ultimately, this work asks the audience to consider the uncertain forces shaping daily lives, a society and to recognize the extraordinary within.
It also explores my relationship with the idea of home and the place, having spent almost my entire life outside of my root culture, community and the place.