Between Us
Ashwathi Vijaykumar
Between Us From the moment we are born we embark upon a lifelong relationship with walls, with all their connotations of containment, protection, division, separation, ownership and all the emotive associations that they arouse in us. The streets of Panaji, Goa, all I could notice were these walls between us. I walked through each path, I wandered through each route I realised the doors were shut, windows were sealed and high raised walls of all the houses. I experienced myself in the city, and the city exists through my embodied experience As much I heard about this place from tourism, exquisiteness, people, art, music, and literature was just part of it. The deeper I tried to know the less was I to explore. But these walls was something decidedly eerie and uncanny about the sight of these unpopulated walls, which were created to be populated. There was an air of abandoned about their look here, not a sense of neglect or even emptiness but a sense of loss, not a void, but something more rarefied and cleansed of meaning by the presence of absence. I felt my heart race as I considered all this but then as I look at this series I feel calm once again returning, I feel their ameliorating effect.
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Acknowledgment A special thanks to my family and my special one, of course, for all their love, support, encouragement and financial support. I would like to express the deepest appreciation to Richard Kalvar (Magnum Photographer) for his timely review and feedback, Emily Graham (Magnum Organiser), Lola Mac Dougall Padgaonkar and whole of GoaPhoto team for giving me this opportunity. A special thanks to Shiho Kito, Rohit Saha, Adira Thekkuveetil, Dinesh Abiram for their support and my team for their encouragement. Lastly, I extend my gratitude towards Rishi Singhal, Photography Co-ordinator, for his understanding, wisdom, patience and encouragement. Without whose support I wouldn’t have ever received this opportunity at first place.
Thank you
These photographs of walls also made me realise the notion that architecture can actually afford a tactile satisfaction