Cultural Practices

‘I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you’ is a project, inspired by the opening scene in Jean Luc- Godard’s Le Mépris (1963) and the Billie Holiday song, I’ll Be Seeing You (1944). This body of work was initiated by Katragadda on the expressions and registers of love through a protagonist, his partner Shweta. It is an ode to the in-betweens, the interlude filled with memories of loves lost and a longing for the reawakening of love. It attempts to capture ways of seeing and searching for one’s lover, the desire and heartache of looking for the elusive other in the spaces around. The overarching symbol of the moon combines the desire for the lover, the desire for the world, and the desire for the image. The work draws from the genre of gothic romance with subtexts of the supernatural, absent presences, portentous spaces charged with fear and desire, hidden secrets, omens, and birds. Like the moon that indexes both absence and presence, wholeness and emptiness - the book's central character is a haunting figure on the verge of disappearance and subsequent reappearance. Through mark-making, erasure, and embroidery, the aim is to layer the images to bring out the complexities of the self and relationships.

Award of Excellence

I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you

Hari Katragadda
Independent
India

hari.katragadda

Hari Katragadda’s artistic practice explores communities, environment and personal memories using the narrative potential of documentary photography, text and drawing. He graduated with a Master’s degree in photojournalism from the University of Texas at Austin and worked as a photojournalist in New Delhi. He is based in Mumbai.