© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary

Mémoire Temporelle

Kalpesh Lathigra

 2016-2019 — Mumbai, India

About this series

In Hindu mythology there was once the common idea that if a Hindu left their homeland and crossed the sea away from India they would lose their very being. The implication would be no more religion or caste and therefore trapped in the reincarnation cycle ad infinitum. 
Artist Kalpesh Lathigra reflected on how enigmatic this idea was for him growing up in Britain: “my family had crossed that sea but we were still Indians in the UK, and British Non-Resident Indians in India”. Kalpesh Lathigra began Mémoire Temporelle
 as an odyssey into what life could have been, had his family not migrated from India to Africa, and then to the UK, over the course of three generations. 
All of the photographs were shot in Mumbai – the city he identifies as a spiritual home. It represents to him a sacred and imaginative place. Possibly a muse in the notion of a new place of longing. What inspired these mixed memories of India? Where did they come from? And more significantly: What initiated that hüzün – that particularly melancholic longing for a place? In Istanbul: Memories and the City, Orhan Pamuk describes hüzün as the feeling of a veil over reality – a calming and clouding phenomenon that brings comfort. 
Until 05.06.2021 at Anahita Contemporary, Berlin, DE.

© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary
© Kalpesh Lathigra - Courtesy of the artist and Anahita Contemporary

Photographer: Kalpesh Lathigra
Nationality: Indian
Based in: London, UK
Website: www.kalpeshlathigra.com
Instagram: @kalpeshlathigra

Kalpesh Lathigra was born in London in 1971 and studied photography at the London College of Printing. Kalpesh Lathigra’s work has won multiple international awards, including the World Press Photo Award in the Arts category. He is a recipient of the W. Eugene Smith Fellowship and Churchill Fellowship. Kalpesh Lathigra is a visiting lecturer at Syracuse University (USA) and London South Bank University. Mémoire Temporelle is his European solo-exhibition debut at Anahita Contemporary.

Education
Postgraduate Diploma in Photojournalism’s London College of Communication

Awards
2021 DYCP Arts Council England
2014 Brighton Photo Biennial Commission “A Return to Elsewhere” 2014 Lightwork Residency, Syracuse 2014
2010 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize
2009 PhotoEspana Descubrimientos
2007 PhotoEspana Descubrimientos
2005 Winston Churchill Fellowship -Brides of Krishna
2004 W.Eugene Smith Fellowship -Brides of Krishna
2000 1st Prize Arts and Entertainment, World Press Photo