Memoire Temporelle is a photographic project by Kalpesh Lathigra exploring the city of Bombay through a series of emotionally resonating images reflecting his memories on a life that could have been. The project is the first of a trilogy exploring his personal history to the subcontinent.
What are our memories if not the mirrors we gaze into…In Hindu mythology, there was once an idea that if a Hindu crossed the sea away from India they would loose their very being – no more religion, no caste, and becoming trapped in the reincarnation cycle ad infinitum. I thought how puzzling this parable was growing up, Memoire Temporelle – or temporal memory.
“My family had crossed that sea, but we were still Indians in the UK, and British non-resident Indians in India “The weekends growing up would be Indian cinema played on pirated videos and listening to the songs from Abihimaan, Sholay or Khabi Khabi.
Diwali and Navarati in the Autumn of London. In the winter a holiday to India… these were my teenage years.
Between 2016 and 2019, I made eight trips to Mumbai, I considered it to be my spiritual home. There, over those three years, I photographed all the images for Memoire Temporelle – a through-the-looking-glass odyssey into what life could have been had my family not migrated from India to the UK via Africa over three generations.
The images in Memoire Temporelle span roads and reflections, portraits and parrots, flowers and fires, shot in both black-and-white and colour. “Emotional resonances”, from memories that may or may not have happened, long since past. Some of the people I met by chance, while others I cast through Feat Artists, a creative agency into vague roles. In the image of a girl, I see someone who could have been my girlfriend, a portrait of a young man, I recognise a version of myself.
Some of the more abstract images relate to associative symbols that have recurred throughout my life. A bird and cage, for instance, reminds me of a poem I wrote as a boy, and then later, of reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for the first time and understanding its profound effect on a personal level. Regardless of subject matter every image came to me serendipitously, found while wandering the streets of Mumbai.
