Culture & Community | East Rock | Photography | Arts & Culture | Never Ending Books | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative
KeQing Tan Photos. All artwork by Amartya De. Dissonant Realities runs at Vol. II at 810 State St. through June 11.
Oh life, the coolness of water, the bustling highway of ducks that walk back home across babbling brooks. Death by road, a train, decapitated headless savage, oh burst vessel, conduits of life ooze raspberry jelly.
Printed in blurry, black font on white paper, these haunting words describe moments of dissonance in the work of photographer Amartya De. His new photo exhibition Dissonant Realities runs at Volume Two: A Never Ending Books Collective through June 11th. The collective, which has De's work in its side gallery, is located at 810 State St.
Dissonant Realities was created between October 2018 and mid-2022, during De's enrollment at the International Center of Photography and the Yale School of Art, and a temporary stay in Humboldt, California. His creative process spanned several locations: New York, New Haven, Kolkata, and a road trip during the summer of 2021 from Montana to California.
KeQing Tan Photos. All artwork by Amartya De. Dissonant Realities runs at Vol. II at 810 State St. through June 11.
The collection ultimately came together in the gallery of Volume Two this May. A nonprofit and creative collective located on 810 State Street, Volume Two has supported New Haven creatives since its opening in 2021, offering its two rooms for free bookings and frequent music. Before that time, it was a long-running community bookstore, where beloved owner Roger Uihlein held grassroots arts events from drone concerts to film screenings.
“I believe our space is booked for several months,” said Vol. II member Barb Wolfer. “Usually, when artists want to partner with us, they just reach out.”
De signed up to display his own work after a long history of visits to the collective. He initially visited Volume II for its free books and records, then became a donor of his own photo books. When making his decision, he also took into account the shows and meetings that Never Ending Books offered at the same time.
“I wanted to explore how the artwork and its scale could activate the sense of time, space, and ethos of the place,” De said in an email.
In May and into this month, De’s exhibition ran (and is still running) alongside several events, sharing the space with musicians of the New Haven Improvisers Collective and poets from Open Mic Surgery in the evenings. In the afternoons, regulars to the collective’s main storefront saw the new photographs, and were drawn to the adjacent gallery.
KeQing Tan Photos. All artwork by Amartya De. Dissonant Realities runs at Vol. II at 810 State St. through June 11.
Currently, 40 photographic prints cover the walls from floor to ceiling. Some are taken from De’s archive, while others have been freshly printed. Moving throughout the room, a viewer might find that his work transcends a single style, subject, or location: one photograph depicts a sterile, colorless hallway, while the other displays the delicate, colorful detailing inside an Indian bus.
Some photos are tucked behind frames, while others appear as they were printed. None of them have titles or captions.
“I decided to keep them uncaptioned as I wanted people to make up their own mind and not be influenced by a journalistic way of looking,” De said. “A panorama of sorts, an immersion into a space where you look and are looked at.”
In the corner of the gallery on a recent Saturday, a framed photo leaned against a mirror, set apart from the others. In it, a woman stands alone, the light from the adjacent house illuminating her side. In the background, the moon shines from behind a tree. The foreground recedes into darkness. The empty space around the woman exudes a sense of loneliness and isolation.
KeQing Tan Photos. All artwork by Amartya De. Dissonant Realities runs at Vol. II at 810 State St. through June 11.
Framed by several smaller photos, a large print of the interior of a bus sat on another wall, slightly below eye-level. For a moment, the bus window offered a glimpse into the world outside, slightly blurred as the bus moved through the streets of Kolkata. The driver, positioned inside the rearview mirror, looked forward with a focused stare. Intricate patterns spiraled around him, surrounded by photos of landscapes and religious figures.
“As the bus drove off, I made an exposure,” De recalled. “The blues, browns and yellows of the other buses outside the windshield kept changing as everything was in motion. Kolkata keeps reminding me that India is a changing country with a long history and a secular dynamic, and how people believe in many faiths at the same time.”
Hovering above a door frame of the gallery, the image of a smiling family looked out towards the rest of the room. Strung immediately below it was a garland of dried marigolds. In the shot, De’s mother is smiling, caught taking a photo as De photographs her. The other figures—his aunt, uncle, and father respectively– are frozen in relaxed stances.
KeQing Tan Photos. All artwork by Amartya De. Dissonant Realities runs at Vol. II at 810 State St. through June 11.
De described the placement of the photo above the doorway to be unique to Indian traditions: images of gods or goddesses, horseshoes, or flowers are often hung above doorways. As he stood in the gallery of Never Ending Books, he felt as though his mother was photographing the space. Suddenly the photograph was a portal, allowing him to experience a faraway life. It gave him the ability to travel through time and space.
Moments like these define De’s approach to photography, an exploration of lived experience in the age of fast-paced globalization. Memory, family, history, labor, and relationships merge as his camera flashes, moving from an empty classroom to a mobile home park. In the quietness of a single-room gallery, he invites the viewer to contemplate the dynamics of human connection, so they may more clearly define their own dissonant reality.
This article comes from the 2023 Cohort of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative. KeQing Tan is a senior at Wilbur Cross High School and the Educational Center for the Arts.