As children, my sisters and I would often vacation at my grandfather's home. In our bedroom was a cabinet filled with photo albums. Wedding and funeral albums, birthday photos, my relatives visits to Goa and their lives abroad, photos of our family when they were young and more. Many of the people in those photos I haven't even met in person. But knew them intimately thanks to photographs. This remains one of my favourite memories growing up.

 

When I was about 10 years old, my uncle gifted me a box camera. I loved it. I remember learning to load the film, carefully rationing what photos I wanted to click, spending so much time controlling the outcome because it was so limited and expensive.

 

In my 20's, I moved to Bombay to study Advertising. Thanks to a friend, I bought my first DSLR. That camera would see me through some beautiful and dark times, documenting, through photography, my life as it unravelled. Some of my most cherished photos are from this time and this camera. It makes me nostalgic every time I think of it. 

 

Just like my journey with photography, so also is my approach to documenting people and their lives - like a story we get to look back on and get transported to.

 

My hope is that you find in this space photographs of people who were seen exactly as they wanted to be, celebrated for the life they chose to live and the beauty of their insides reflected in still images.