Here, Not Here by Kushagra Anand

Not sure how, but looking at people filled me with fear. Just days leading up to my course starting in the UK, I started hating photography. Swirling into a silent confusion, I sat in a small studio apartment remembering India and wondering what home is.

Here, Not Here is a multi-layered visual text charting the psychological friction of being suspended between two continents. Shot and written between Meerut (India) and London (UK) during the acute border disruptions of 2020–2022, the project investigates the internal anatomy of isolation and modern diaspora experience under extreme geopolitical pressures.

During months of sudden international lockdowns and forced immobility, the relationship with my immediate surroundings warped. I experienced a fear of seeing other human beings and escaping from those situations and places, which led to an emotional detachment from my surrounding, a psychological survival mechanism where I felt like an outside spectator tracking the movements of a character in a narrative, rather than actively living my own life. The camera and my journal ceased to be mere creative outlets; they became critical, confrontational instruments used to record and process this state of surreal estrangement.

Bypassing conventional monograph structures, the book functions as a hybrid document weaving together three layers: photographs of urban and domestic isolation - static yet in motion; unedited scans of my raw handwritten diaries; and stark media headlines from the period.

The book’s rhythm is intentionally cinematic, relying on careful sequencing to evoke a feeling of perpetual transit, of being caught between geographies, doubt, and eventual creative rediscovery but with a renewed curiosity. Ultimately, Here, Not Here challenges traditional representations of migration, confronting a central, lingering paradox of viewing home not as a permanent geographical destination, but as an unresolvable psychological state.