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We tend to not realise as to what extent this affects our perception of a place. Often, we associate a city/town with the built space surrounding us. For eg: Paris or New York; as soon as we even hear the names of these cities, there is a visual picture of the architectural language and vibe these places have. It can be argued that these are places with iconic architecture and hence the memory, but I believe this goes deeper than that. The emotional response we have with every place we live in, visit or see, is a subconscious choice for making ourselves comfortable.

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Our mind relates emotions/nostalgia to spaces; the feeling of seeing a familiar place/hometown, which takes us back to the memory associated with it. All of our visual cues are coming through the form, shapes, lines of the space we have around. So, the built form always plays an important part of creating the nostalgia and memory. There is also a unique experience we have, when it’s a completely new city. We tend to be more sensitive to the outside, observe more.

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I moved to England from India, in the peak of the pandemic in 2020. I observed how my surroundings started feeling as I started getting comfortable with the city I lived in and realised there is a fresh perspective I look at the city with, compared to a local.

 

I considered the series as 'portraits' of the houses, as if they were waiting for me every day, to be seen, to be remembered.

The overseen were now being re-observed!