“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
I feel a City is redolent of a distinct personality it derives from its people, and in turn it lends a personality to those who embrace it. Invisible Cities is an exploration of this relationship, unveiling the “something concealed in everything”. For this project, which I shot over 3 years, I chose to work with analog double exposures. Shooting the same roll of film twice, once with portraits and again with cityscapes, made the element of serendipity supreme. I gave up control of which pair of personalities will end up fused unchangeably, and in turn was delighted by compositions I could not have conceived of myself. Exposure stacking also gave an almost painterly freedom to combine different cities, times and compositions, leading to these curious reflections on city life.
