The texts consist of love letters between my parents. These letters were written over a period of 6 months in 1969, shortly after their engagement and even into the first few months of their marriage, before they lived together. They each write with a sense of idealism, romance and fear. My mother hardly knew my father, but was about to leave her entire family back in India to live with this “stranger” in London. There are 68 letters in total.

Some are written in Hindi while others are written in English. 

Here is an example of a love letter on various media: the original -> cardstock -> vellum. I then show an example of a current photograph of my parents and place it behind the vellum.   

“See You at Home” has not involved much collaboration with my parents, but it was imperative for me to introduce their own voices into it. Now that my mother is gone, I’m at a crossroads on what to do with these texts. One idea is to work with my father and employ poetic devices, such as erasure, to modify these texts, in order to evoke a sense of memory and the reframing of one’s personal history over time.

“My father had just finished raking the leaves out when I made this portrait of him in the childhood swimming pool. He still tends to it even though it’s no longer used. Here it lives in a continuous state of decay.

This pool is where he taught me how to swim when I was one and a half years old. This is the pool where so many home videos were made: him chasing me around the pool with the hose, eating lunch with aunties that were visiting from India, and from times even before I was born.

This is the state of the pool now, and has been for years. I made this portrait after not seeing him for 8 months. I try to visit as often as I can.”

... which led to a layout that employs these archival images & memories as "Satellite Images":

Clockwise from Bottom Left