Sameer Raichur

Sameer Raichur (b. 1986, India) is a Bangalore-based photographer. After graduating from Law school in 2010, he worked as an associate at a corporate lawfirm before realising he wanted to turn his hobby, photography, into a career. In 2011/12 he studied an MA in professional photography at the Hallmark Institute of Photography, Turners Falls. He currently works as a freelance photographer taking on portrait, wedding and editorial commissions. His interests lie in documentary and street photography.

Because we come from somewhere

When Raichur’s father, a recently retired investment banker, made the decision to take on the duties of puja and administration of their ancestral family matha (temple) in Haveri district, the artist began a project documenting the experience. Accustomed to relocating all over the country according to his father’s job, Raichur found it somewhat difficult to relate to his family’s traditions, customs and particularly their religious heritage.

Using photography as a means to express his own ambiguous response as an agnostic to the rituals of the devoted, the project is an exploration of the temple and the lives of the inhabitants and objects that occupy, enrich and in some cases, adorn it through the artist’s perspective.

Interested by the jarring transitions between modernity and tradition that he witnessed in Bangalore, where his parents lived in a gated community with modern amenities, to the rural hinterland of Haveri, Raichur plans to continue the project by documenting his family’s adjustment back into city life.

http://cargocollective.com/sameerraichur