“Love: Conquered Spaces.” – Saurav Das.

I am Saurav Das, an independent and aspiring photographer based in Kolkata. A self-proclaimed flaneur, I try to turn my attention to how life unfolds all around me, in one fleeting moment after another, seeking some uniqueness in the mundane cycles. Relying on a diet of daily possibilities, the observations and a certain sensibility, I find this process to be enriching and empowering, where it paves a path for further growth and evolution. Having taken up photography four years ago, it has since been, a journey of creation and uninhibited expression, as I learn to keep looking and learning, to build and grow.

“Love: Conquered Spaces”, depicts a visual journey, a work borne out of the lockdown, shot exclusively indoors under natural conditions, where I finally came to terms with the idea of working indoors, walled off from the outdoor din, and eventually turned my attention to my immediate surroundings, pausing at otherwise unregarded nooks and crannies, spaces that had always been silent witnesses to everything. This is an attempt to portray how love “lives” on, and manages to thrive in close proximity. I wish to define this, more appropriately, as a search, for this emotion, that masquerades as an elusive entity in the spaces we inhabit, in the most likeliest (and apparently insignificant) of places; often hiding in plain sight, lurking in some shadowy corner of an abandoned room, herded by the swarming dust kicked up by a stray breeze, in the hesitant gleam of dying embers or even in the transient warmth of the bed in the winter sun, in the delicate residue of a colder night.   Having marked its presence, it now flits off to a new lair, and all that remains are the gentle reminders and clues for the observer, to piece them all together.  This series portrays a humble effort, in a subjective and non-figurative light, where I scavenge for answers.