Sentiments around ‘a sense of belonging’ have been following me for the larger part of my life – this question of where is it that I truly belong?
I consider places and spaces not as physical constructs alone, but as emotional ones. It is my belief that the geography of a place is only as relevant to one, as the memory/experience we have of that space. This body of work I am building is akin to me journaling – I am both questioning and revealing.
I left a home of many years to make home in a new place. One may say that in many ways,I never really let go of that old space; and consequently never really fully arrived in this new place. While my older more familiar home starts to transform beyond recognition, physically and politically, my memories of the place align no more to its new self. And memories of the new home are still forming. This new place and I – we are still trying to figure how we meet each other. I suspect the onus is on me. The notion of home has taken me a few years to come to terms with. I feel like I am closer to understanding and resolving this now, than a few years past.
The images presented here were created between India and the United States of America. This coming together of images in this narrative happened over this long pandemic year — one that has me confronting long held ideas and beliefs.
About Rahul Majumdar
Born and raised in India, within a bilingual family and now living in NYC, Rahul’s work centers around the themes of belonging/un-belonging, family and connectedness, and human desire. He has a formal education in business, not art. After a little over a decade with corporate India, he started out as a full-time photographer. It was the loss of his father that led him to question his motivations and seek a more meaningful way to access the world. He turned to image making and has since been living life as a freelance photographer / visual artist.
In 2017, Rahul self-published ‘Inarticulate’, a single edition photo chapbook of 100 copies. His practice is motivated by ideas/incompletions he needs to resolve or questions he needs to answer. In this long pandemic world, he is developing work that explores the notion of home while also working on his second photo book. [Official Website]
