Sameer Raichur
bangaloREsident-Expanded@basis
Sameer Raichur is an independent Indian photographer based out of Bangalore and a member of Diversify Photo and Native Agency. He graduated with distinction from the Hallmark Institute of Photography; Turners Falls, MA in 2012 – necessary course correction after a brief stint practicing as a corporate lawyer.
He has an affinity for anachronistic socio-cultural practices, and memory and nostalgia are frequent themes in his work. He is particularly drawn to documenting ignored traditions and subcultures hiding in plain sight and is deeply interested in and continues to explore the thorny notion of masculinity and all its accompanying baggage through his work.
He is especially interested in portraiture, documentary photography and relies on editorial commissions to further his personal practice. His clients include Caravan Magazine, FT Weekend Magazine, Geo Magazin, GQ, The Indian Quarterly, Libération, Lonely Planet, LiveMint, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Time Magazine.
Proposed project at basis:
Like an understanding of the outside world is inevitably influenced by personal life, art is greatly enriched by the harvest of personal experiences. Their emotional expression in a chosen medium has been known to ease our remembrance of negative life events and cope with trauma. I want to use the opportunity provided by the bangaloREsidency-Expanded to recreate memories from a difficult life experience to process any lingering trauma using photography.
Part of this exploration will involve the ‘staging’ of certain incidents – memories seared into the subconscious that are essential to reconstructing the past. A multi-disciplinary approach will benefit the process of staging and recreation as it might involve practices as diverse as performance art, set design and writing; among others. Working at the intersection of cultural viewpoints, the goal is to discover a novel narrative technique to tell a story that I believe would interest an objective observer.
