This show will be installed at the MAC from January 2nd – February 27th.
TWO FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTIONS: January 2nd and February 6, 5:00–7:00pm
Jan 2 — show opening & artist talk
Feb 6 — show & musical performance
Spokane artist Rajah Bose excavates the images he’s amassed to create an installation of photos, videos, musical compositions, and sculptures for the MAC Gallery. The second iteration of his middlelife series, middlelife ii, focuses his lens more directly at the opposite sides of the world from where his parents originate — his father the son of a Indian factory worker and his mother the daughter of a Wisconsin farmer.
photo album: corrupt volume / middlelife / Whitworth
middlelife ii
My memory is made of images — some I’ve made, some I’ve taken.
These hundreds of thousands of moments captured on silicon sensors are stored and ready for recall, if I can locate them. Many of those images haven’t been seen since they were created, transferred to hard drives and stacked on shelves like the photo albums my mother made of our family growing up, just more dense.
For middlelife I searched those albums, those hard drives, for every photograph that was saved. Many reminded me of the moments when they were created, experiences I had otherwise not recalled. I also found that many held no memory for me at all. This was an unsettling experience for a mind that has come to rely on the camera as the memory’s assistant.
For a photojournalist the image is proof, it is the truth, but whose? Two people will not share the same ‘thousand words’ about any given photograph. Is it reasonable to think the image is somewhat subjective, and bends to the viewer’s expectation? Photographs, regardless of how they’re made, are no more true than any story we’ve told ourselves.
Documentary images create a duality of memory between the photographer and subject. Part of my subjects’ lives are forever intertwined with my own. It’s this memory creation through photography and documentation that encircles all of our lives, a perpetual borrowing from one another. We are not merely creatures of our own creation; everything we are, down to our own memories, is borrowed from another.
Those images remember me and remember for me. I trust them because they tell me who I believe I am. They’re proof I was here, though they’re far from the truth.
perpetual memoria / middlelife / whitworth
the sequel
This show is the second installment of the middlelife series. The first iteration introduced the theme — the photographics of memory through a retrospective of my photojournalism work. middlelife ii, similarly compares origins, but through the lens of the places where my family originates.
My parents are from opposite sides of the world — the son of a Indian factory worker and the daughter of a Wisconsin farmer. They continue to shape me in my attempts to know them by understanding where they come from. In my travels through the countries where they were born, I’ve documented the moments around me as I’ve passed through by foot, or car, or train, with little additional planning or direction.
These otherwise disconnected photographic observations through the countryside and cityscapes of India and America are made common by their pairings with one another. These diptychs sourced from two very different places create a new comprehension at their intersection. Somewhat inter- dimensionally, this is the place where I’m from.
sound of music
Inspired by travels and stories gathered along the Indian and American rails, Rajah recorded The First Sounds, an album of train songs that accompanies this show. The album may be listened to in the gallery on available headphones and will be performed live during the First Friday openings.
The First Sounds album may be found at Raj Saint Paul and heard wherever you listen to music.
artist bio
Rajah has worked as a newspaper photojournalist, a commercial photographer, and a filmmaker. He lives in Spokane with his wife Ellen, a fellow artist.
FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTIONS: January 2nd and February 6, 5:00–7:00pm
Jan 2 — show opening & artist talk
Feb 6 — show & musical performance
