Mohini Chandra

album pacifica

Limited edition artist's book

'We see only the backs of the photographs: they do not show us people but the marks of their-having-been-there: names, dates and happenings barely legible.'
- Elisabeth Edwards

This is an artist's bookwork featuring over 100 images that Chandra began to collect of her Fiji Indian family who are dispersed across the globe. It stands as homage to - and an attempt at - ‘reuniting’ her family.

However Chandra has literally inverted the traditional family photograph by presenting the entire series of photographs in verso, revealing only the back of each image with the photographer’s stamp, handwritten inscriptions, and general wear and tear. These details become clues or evidence not only to Chandra’s personal background but also to the ways in which we all rely on the visual as proof of history.

‘While the viewer is denied the actual photograph, they are able to conjure up an ‘imaginary’ photographic landscape…the work evokes a space in which the audience’s own histories and experiences can be imagined.'
- Mohini Chandra

album pacifica, by Mohini Chandra, published by Autograph (ABP), London

http://www.autograph-abp-shop.co.uk/books/album-pacifica