Anja Bohnhof

Anja Bohnhof travels to the places in India, Africa and Europe that marked crucial stages or watersheds in Gandhi’s private and public life.

"It is a complex, multilayered journey. On the one hand, the chronological arrangement of the imagery– from his birthplace in Pordanbar in what is now the Indian state of Gujarat to the site of his assassination in New Delhi –allows the fascinating trajectory of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s life to emerge with all its contradictions: he was a man who evolved from being a diffident young lawyer to become a major figure in world history and who developed, during this time, his own spiritually based understanding of individual conduct, social existence and political action. On the other hand, the photographs visualise a journey through time, since they make visible the sense of tension inherent in the places depicted and engendered by the relationship between their modern-day appearance and their historically charged atmosphere.
This tension takes on very different forms: some pictures document a visible memorial or even a museum co-optation that may have some far-reaching historical-political implications.
In other photographs, such as in the views of the prison cells where Gandhi was incarcerated and which are still in use, we are presented with functional continuities or transformations. In yet another category of images, the visual reference points no longer exist or can only be partially guessed at, either because the original buildings or landscapes have disappeared or because only odd fragments remain as reminders of the past." (Anja Bohnhof)

C-Print. Each: 70 x 90 cm or 100 x 130 cm