Frustration can be stimulating.

Trip to Raja Market

After weeks and weeks of mindmaps, free writing and general speculation inside my own head, i went out to the city . to meet the real canvas. and i was stumped.
The amount of factors playing out simultaneously in any given urban public realm are entirely overwhelming. and i could do little but walk around the space several times, trying to get acquainted with the space and its activity. trying to draw a mental map of the space in my head and take a few photographs. the place - Raja Market one of the oldest markets in town, is a place for specialized wholesale markets and shops. selling everything under the sun.
The place seemed to affect me with a sudden mild onset of momentary amnesia as it took me several walks of the same roads to overcome the distractions of the many constantly shifting elements to identify the constant ones, and to orient myself in the place well enough to draw a mental picture or map of the place in my head. through this walking exercise i took a few pictures of things that caught my eye.
I was pretty reluctant in the beginning to pull out my camera and start shooting people and places, since being 'sensitized' by my schooling i was skeptical as to what reactions i might receive from the people there, and whether i was ready to participate in such dialogue- i wasn't entirely sure why i was there yet. to my surprise though, i got no reactions. some people seemed mildly curious as to what i was photographing and why, but none were curious enough to approach me with a question. also this might have been because i was constantly walking around the place, looking at and photographing various things at the same time, almost as a tourist might have. After several rounds of the place some people seemed to recognize me and acknowledged me as i walked by with a cursory glance or an occasional smile, but still no questions. Encouraged Anonymity.


Went out looking for a 'place' and the first thing i noticed was the 'placelessness'.








The capacity for the mythical/fantastical in the everyday.








Raja Market : Entrance and Inside. A square enclosed within the hear of the market area. The original market. opening out on all four sides to different streets, commercial area and the ground level, the storeys above are to-let.









postmodernity- "how these spaces flatten the visual elements into the perfect absence of hierarchies mean equality or nothing,yet have or are haunted by the vestiges of meaning" - Koshy



Paul Auster on Identity and Urban Spaces - A piece of monologue
"Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within... By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere."

Paul Auster, City of Glass

I felt this abstract resonated with my first trip to the city. To draw from this 'nowhereness' and to focus it is the next attempt.