Alumna Update: Divya Cowasji
Divya Cowasji studied photography at the International Centre of Photography in New York as a 2015 scholar. Since 2015, she has shifted focus from moving to still images in visual storytelling, with a special interest in analog and alternate processes in photography. She is currently a freelance photographer who lives in Mhow, a small town in the centre of India.
In this week’s post she shares with us an excerpt of her ongoing project, Remember Me. This series was recently showcased in the 2020 edition of the Angkor Photo Festival.
Remember Me
What happens when a person dies? Do all their thoughts and feelings die along with them? What of the things they leave behind? Do they count if there is no one around to love those things? What if you are that person? What if nothing is nothing and everything is full of invisible meaning? What if everything they left behind were all yours to cherish, and therefore all your burden to bear?
The photographs below are excerpts from an ongoing project titled ‘Remember Me’, documenting my family history through the material objects that people leave behind and family lore passed on through generations. At the moment focused on the women in my family - my grandmothers, great-grandmother and grand aunt; it is my love letter to the everyday, flawed and incredible people who came before me and left indelible impressions on my being. The work is in a very early stage, and I do not know what eventual form it might take; though at the moment I imagine it as a book.
