memories piggybacking on postcards

Created about six years ago, this is the second of my friend Vrinda Sexaria’s two projects that solicited indirect feedback & inputs from friends & relatives. Vrinda made the feedback part of her process of documenting memories associated with her family house, which was demolished to make way for the redevelopment of the property into apartments for the sub-units of the large family.

Yet again, Vrinda solicits participation in processes that are perhaps her attempt at reconciling with incredibly intimate and even violent episodes that move her. Again, the collaboration is indirect – participating from & in different points of time & place, no conversations and no further elaboration on the intent & process that the images and the brief. And again, I was more than happy to play along.

The form of the contribution, this time however, was specified and suggested both intimacy as well as informality. Postcards are a wonderful way of expressing light intimacy and eliciting succinct responses. They also suggest vulnerability in their being exposed. With these three qualities, postcards can be intense. In addition, their literal duality of faces also offers a metaphorical otherness: of being just an image on a card.