Home (photographic zine)

HOME priyanka and ishita mehra

Prelude This photo series represents the images of the place where I have been living since 17 years, the place that I call my home. The thought that I’d be leaving and relocating to a new house made me look at my belongingness in a new light. Capturing these spaces in the photographs are a reminder of the emotion it holds of the past.

The thought of leaving envelopes me in pain of the inevitable loss, and the fear of uncertainty. But there is absolutely nothing in life that can be done without loss and pain.

Where’s home for you Often when strangers at any gatherings ask me about the place I belong, I feel pulled back at the fast reaching reality of my present fallbacks. Home is where my family is. But I can’t tell anymore where it would be. The obvious call of future was nally approaching. The tides that looked distant had now touched my feet, it didn’t just sway, it burned the grounds of my skin. It is time for me to leave a certain memory. My home, will no longer be mine.

As I wonder back at the years gone by, I think of ways to remember as much as I can. How can a memory last forever? I was eleven when I was told the truth of the walls I lived in. ‘It’s not one house dear’. It was never ours to begin with.

This truth made me question if the memories I built would even belong to me? The bricks around me, even its physical form had created a space to which I related. I’d look around my room with a strange sense of ownership. My bed, my curtains, my ‘things’. Just mine and this is where my soul stays.

Fifteen years later, a bit older yet not wiser, my adolescent self asked me again, ‘Do your memories still belong to you?’ Leaving feels like breaking apart from a kind of self that only exists in that space. When these walls die, so will that adolescent kid in me. The demolition of a self that can only be seen in the mirrors of this house.

And this home only.

Before we leave, I’ll take a moment to forgive, forget and love myself again in relation to this space. Before we leave, I will create afresh, asking: How can a memory stay forever? I couldn’t have loved this home any better than what I do now. Finally, I own these memories. The only ones I own to repay all the years of pain. Where’s home for you?