“You don’t need an ocean to feel like you’re drowning. You feel it, between your chest and your throat, the weight of it stretching you outside yourself, like a dead fish on the shore.“
I am a part of a time where an entire generation is stuck in a traffic jam, waiting tables, long queues. Performing daily activities like a simulated robot, slaves with white collar. Our thoughts and wishes are carefully preserved in cache files under the observation of some complex algorithm. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that our existence depends upon some argument over a debate panel. We are a consumer and by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Just when you start to think that we have no purpose or place, no Great War, no Great Depression suddenly you are surrounded with a global pandemic, severe cyclone, an unavoidable global economic recession, and many more pessimistic situations. For the last three months, I am under lockdown as most of the people in the world. The government has imposed lockdown over the whole country and a mechanical voice always reminding us that we should stay inside our houses and maintain social distancing.
During this time I am discovering and rediscovering myself and my home. Through this photo essay, I tried to represent my emotions, thoughts, dreams surrounding every corner of my home. Trapped inside my thoughts like a fish trapped inside an aquarium, like a kite tangled on a cactus. It is a visual representation of my imagination as a fiction. I have tried to frame the idea of the juxtaposition of imaginations and emotions surrounds my home. Our Home holds our memories, fears, and desires, assembled like furniture and surrounded by mental clutter. This is the visual representation of my thoughts wrapped with the fear of uncertainty, the privilege of shelter, the suffocation of repeated routine, and the hope of overcoming. Though my body is locked inside four walls, chained with digital bits and bytes my soul is traveling like a fast train in search of the rainbow beyond the horizon to find my dream and fantasy.
About Pritam Dutta
Pritam Dutta is an independent photographer who currently lives in Kolkata, India. His professional career started as a software engineer, but he decided to make a change to pursue his true passion for photography. The curiosity and hunger for learning that had motivated his engineering career did not vanish.
Pritam now uses photography as a vehicle to understand and help depict issues that puzzle him and satisfy his passion for learning. Love for painting drove him towards photography to capture the emotions and actions of people. Among his most prominent themes are culture, religion, and people. To him, photography is the best platform to represent moments of truth.
You can find Pritam Dutta on the Web:
Copyrights:
All the pictures in this post are copyrighted to Pritam Dutta. Their reproduction, even in part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.
