Heptanesia is an ongoing photographic work set in the city of Bombay / Mumbai, built around the idea and the gesture of displacement.
Following a kind of psychogeographical approach, this work explores the poetic charge and surreal potential of this place, playing on the resonances between urban space, subjective experience and historical narratives. Taking the street as a starting point, I observe everyday life, motifs and idiosyncrasies of the city. Once recorded, I reappraise this reality in the light of stories from the past and other urban myths. Then, letting the (subconscious) mind operate its own visual alchemy, this image-making process eventually leads to staged 'scenes', where ordinary objects appear into spaces that are steeped in history.
The resulting corpus of images is thus heterogeneous, ranging from traditional street photography to the documentation of ephemeral installations ; with in between the two, a whole spectrum of interventions and situations in various formats, where mundane objects and signs may have been added, rearranged or even decontextualized : interventions that are carried out in a playful way, sometimes in collaboration with the people I encounter on my path, leaving room for chance and bonding.
At the same time a practice of photography and a practice of the city, this experimental documentary project aims as much to “hijack reality” as to capture the grammar of a place; and more specifically, to draw a kaleidoscopic portrait of this cosmopolitan / harbour city that is Bombay, at first sight so sprawling and elusive.
Installation View in Ephemeroptera, TARQ, Mumbai, 2023