My journey is through the intimate space of youth; the treasured icons and the mundane clutter; the carefully placed and the carelessly tossed; the crowdedness of thought and the emptiness of thoughtfulness.
A teen metamorphoses into a young adult who would face multiple challenges. Influenced by experiences in life and exposure to varied social phenomena, a youth would develop his or her character and individuality.
With my camera, I travel the width and length of...
more »My journey is through the intimate space of youth; the treasured icons and the mundane clutter; the carefully placed and the carelessly tossed; the crowdedness of thought and the emptiness of thoughtfulness.
A teen metamorphoses into a young adult who would face multiple challenges. Influenced by experiences in life and exposure to varied social phenomena, a youth would develop his or her character and individuality.
With my camera, I travel the width and length of the privately inhabited space of Sri Lankan youth that allows some avenues for the public display of preferences stated, battles announced and the niches carved. The lens stares at the intimate while gulping down the ordinariness, the extraordinariness and the bedroom life of the young men and women. The divisions of Sri Lankan society along social, cultural, economic and ethnic lines have became more evident during the past few decades. The socio-economic changes and the fallout from ethnic conflict, which are inherent to that period has no parallel in recent Sri Lankan history. My attempt has been to capture the presence and preferences of youth in their own dwellings. For some, this is a well-furnished room while for another it is a corner of the single room that passes for a home for the whole family. For still some others, it is the quiet tranquility of a monastery or the confines of a juvenile prison.
Luxurious spaciousness and the make-shift stand knee to knee in this youthful world; it is a world of contradictions and expectations. I alight upon the sacred cradled safely among the profane and move on to look at everything in between that pile up. It is a stage of life that emerges; clothes, books, various paraphernalia. This is a time of hording like no other; of joy, innocence, courage and vulnerability that is a very particular realm of the young.
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