अहम्
archival
the photographic image serves as a condensed affective object that mediates unconsciously.
retrieval
OF AN UNCONSCIOUS ABSTRACTION
TATTV
ASTITV
VYAKTITV
SATTV
[Background]
of a reality
The relationship between unconscious memories and symbolism is foundational to psychoanalytic theory. Rather than being a simple, direct link, this connection is a dynamic process of compromise, disguise, and representation. Symbolism is the result of negotiation uses to articulate repressed, inaccessible memories and desires without triggering the psychic censor. Symbolism is, therefore, the essential mechanism by which the unconscious content (repressed memory) is translated into the manifest form (the visible symbol).
When applied to the conflicted terrains of postcolonial identity and the rise of nationalism, this photographic process seeks to reveal the structural trauma inherent in a fragmented collective consciousness. The repetition of visual motifs, the deliberate framing of voids, and the insistence on certain textures or lights are intended to abstract the hidden cost of identity formation - the primal repressions and the affective residue of historical violence that fuel contemporary social tensions. The resulting image is a visible symptom, insisting on the unseen truth beneath the ideological surface.
Drawing on the Freudian understanding that unconscious memories are rendered palatable through dream-work (condensation and displacement), and the Lacanian assertion that the unconscious is “structured like a language” I locate memory within the Symbolic Order. The photograph becomes the cipher for the memory. It functions as a Metaphor (condensation), collapsing a vast temporal and emotional sequence into a singular, fixed frame. Crucially, it stands as a perpetual Signifier of Lack, insisting upon the lost object - a moment, a history, or an identity that is irrevocably past. The final image does not show the memory; but the effect of its repression.
Ultimately, this work seeks to challenge the notion of the photograph as a window onto reality. Instead, it positions the photograph as a new reality altogether: a stabilised, material manifestation of the unconscious truth. By visually externalising the mechanisms of displacement and condensation, I invite the viewer to analyse the symbol as an encrypted map back to the collective lack that defines our present moment. The resulting body of works are a meditation on what remains when history is structurally repressed.
[Ground (A)]
in existence
the conditions that shape individual the image continually points back to the self, not just the studium within the frame, but the conscious and unconscious choices made by the photographer (framing, focus, light, moment). It serves as a visual record of my conscious decisions at the moment of creation. , attitudes, and knowledge define within a group, organisation, or society, forming a class collectively, the combined effects of class location, the commodity structure of late capitalism, and class consciousness influenced by common ideas, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge define within a group, organisation, define existence , forming a class collectively, especially through language, existence social structures
[Ground (B)]
in essence
the conditions that shape individual . The process of creating and then viewing the image forces me into a dialogue with my own subjective experience. The image acts as a mirror, allowing the internal conflict - the tension between my heritage, shared history, and the external world - to become visible and available for analysis. The end product is the unconscious visible, as a subject in the photograph. interactions and interconnections, influenced by common ideas, beliefs, attitudes, abstracting the essence by decontextualising the subject from its surroundings and knowledge shared within a group, organisation, or society, forming a class collectively, especially through language, media, and social structures, that define the individual experience.
[Foreground]
and the subjectivity of it all
production and reproduction of subjectivities, intertwined in the technologies of representation, with their effects and affects, their intent and meaning, as perceptible objects.
This body of work is not concerned with objective truth; it is a profound and deliberate dive into the mechanics of human subjectivity, by using the camera as an instrument to assert my own subjectivity. The resulting images may not the objective representation of a subject, but the concrete manifestation of my subjective gaze - a visual topology of my internal world, memory, and sociopolitical consciousness. These images, or rather reflections, are the concrete manifestation of my internal landscape, where the self-referential and self-reflexive qualities of the photographic medium are exploited to make the repressed visible, beyond the subject within the frame.
the production and reproduction of subjectivities, intertwined in the technologies of representation, with their effects and affects, their intent and meaning, as perceptible objects. Subjectivity, at its core, refers to the conscious experiences and unconscious retentions, perceptions, and understandings of an individual - the sense of Self - producing and reproducing the values, beliefs, and desires.
An inquiry into the structural unconscious, where the image serves not as a record of presence, but as an index of absence. Operating on the premise that memory—be it personal or collective—is never articulated directly, but always through symbols and metonymy, the aim is to make visible the resulting abstraction of repressed memory, using the photographic image as the ultimate, material signifier
You can think about the medium in almost purely technological terms: to take a photograph is to exercise a number of options - plane of focus, shutter speed, aperture, framing, angle and so on - and the 'content' of the work becomes your choice from amongst these options and the way you structure them. This is an attitude which comes out of Greenbergian Modernism. Or, you can start from the fact that photography was invented to give an illusionistic rendering of some aspect of the world in front of the camera - which leads into considerations of representation and narrative.
Victor Burgin