TARA FIRMA
In 2016, Delhi-based photographer Chandan Gomes received a message in his “other” inbox on Facebook Messenger from a person called Tara Banerjee. According to the social networking site, they had more than 20 friends in common. She “likes to stalk gullible photographers online and then wreak havoc in their lives and relationships,” she told him. Then she said she knew he was lonely.
Gomes took the bait, turning their online chats into an exhibition titled ‘People You May Know’. It featured at the prestigious photo festival Rencontres d’Arles in Paris this year.
A curious photo-novella, the work comprises naked photos he clicked of Banerjee on Skype, an umbrella that represents the journey he took to Almora to meet her—in vain. A portrait of his mother is his answer to her question about what pain means to him. It’s in her eyes, he says.
The collage touches on the nature of reality and illusion in the search for love in the disembodied digital world, says Gomes, a philosophy major from St Stephen’s College who is also one of the artists chosen for the KochiMuziris Biennale this year.
“While conversing with Tara, I could be everything [that] I was not out there in the real world, without having to prove myself. At the same time, I could be myself, without having to worry about being judged,” he says. “This work is a portrait of the person I am—conflicted, indecisive, impatient and forever struggling with the notions of ‘self’ and the ‘other’.”
‘People You May Know’, too, is still a work in progress. “Now I am tracking [Tara] outside the internet... and not just her, but a lot of people I just know virtually,” he says.
“I guess it is to find closure, to see how different or same she is in the ‘real’ world in relation to the virtual. We have made many conversations about the work, and the idea of sharing private conversations in the public domain. She jokes about the fact that, like me, she too can put out our conversations within a context she’d like. And I’m fine with that,” he says.