It does not matter what Copernicus and Galileo told us. The truth is that we want to be at the centre of our world. The will to frame the world in a coherent narrative, the impulse to control how the world sees us, explain our obsession with the camera. It is everywhere — as a heavy contraption or compact hand-held, or even as a mobile phone. In short, we are all photographers, with the ability to control our own story.
These street photographs, part of an ongoing project, explore the relationship between the self, the camera and the world at large. Only, the subjects have been decontextualised and decentred, or as Shklovsky would have put it, defamiliarised.
The subjects in these pictures were unaware that they were being photographed, even as they posed or were about to pose for selfies or photographs for someone else. The images I have shared here were taken in different parts of India.
Yet, what brings them together are the new stories that emerge once context has been changed. A simple pose with a monument could become a love story with the introduction of a stranger doing the same pose; or look like a scene from a play. It could be a funny expression from a non-participant or the weirdness of a scene of people poking their heads out of a window to take a selfie. I hope you see the stories I saw in these photographs, or perhaps new ones.
Aakash Chakrabarty is based in Delhi. He works with Routledge, Taylor and Francis