This habit of seeing probably arises out of my beginnings in this country as an immigrant infant, raised by parents from two separate and conflicting cultures, England and India. Our family moved like clockwork every two years, further complicating my integration into the society of the various monoculture public schools to which I was constantly trying to adapt myself. Growing up as an outsider forced me to be an observer of social situations as a matter of survival. At first I was not very good at it, and often found myself the butt of ridicule and occasional physical violence. Later, as I grew older and more successfully able to integrate myself into the social world around me, I chose the position of outsider and observer first out of long practiced habit, and finally by conscious choice. I realized that this perspective sometimes gave me a greater insight into society, and formed the basis for my creative investigations in photography.

This questioning attitude has also interpenetrated my approach to the medium of photography on a formal level. My fascination with the process of seeing has led to an investigation of the photographic process as a way to outwardly express the internal, subjective visual experience. My recent work consists of sequential series' of video frames laid out in a grid array. This sequencing functions for me as an analogy to the interaction of vision and memory that forms my own perceptual inner world. These images explore the sequential nature of seeing, but instead of replacing one image with the next, as in the cinematic experience, it makes the progression visible, leaves a trace of each visual sensation. This tracing alludes to the persistence of vision, which enables us to visually blend a sequence of images, presented over time, into the perception of a moving image or animation. In this way I am exploring the territory between still photography and film, first opened by Eadward Muybridge in the 1870's but soon abandoned once practical devices were invented (Zoopraxiscope, then film projectors) which could reconstitute sequential images back into an illusion of motion. Photography in general usage soon bifurcated into the realms of the single viewpoint slice of time, surgically removed from its context, or cinema, the illusion of continuous experience. The middle ground, between these two conventions of image making interests me in its storytelling potential, as well as it's ability to evoke the process of seeing for me. The multiplicity and density of these images is also a response to the image/information overload with which we are confronted in contemporary life. The more I photograph, the farther I get from the idea of a "decisive moment" having any intrinsic validity as an analogue to my visual process or contemporary urban experience, both of which happen for me as a continuous flow of decisive flux, each now creating the next.

The rigidity of the grid pattern in which I arrange these images alludes to the homogenizing effect that is imposed upon the individual by the pressure of the collective, or group behavior. I am especially interested in the role of mass visual culture on this process. Rather than simply reflecting the current state of culture, I believe that the mass media creates and binds together our society in a giant feedback loop of created desire and temporary gratification, which is always transmuted back into an unsatisfied desire. Citizens are referred to collectively as consumers. We are constantly seduced by images attempting to influence our behavior, by increasing our consumption of goods and services by means of a strategy designed to make us feel inadequate or lacking compared to media images. For the most part, we behave as directed. My images examine the results of that process. For example, I have been making a series of photographs looking at conspicuous public cell phone use. The images in the MFA thesis exhibition look at the phenomena of mega warehouse retailing, the satisfaction of media inflamed aggressive instincts through video gaming, and at one recent manifestation of the herding instinct as expressed during the mass consumption of a public entertainment event. By photographing (drawing attention to) specific instances of consumption and group behavior at least partly instigated by advertising and marketing imagery and amplified by the trend inducing forces of conformity, I hope to draw conscious attention to this process. I hope that in confronting these photographs, viewers will be afforded a level of remove from direct involvement in our cultural situation, sharing for a time the mental state in which I created them. I would like people to feel invited to step outside this cycle of desire for a moment of self examination.

Neil Chowdhury, spring 2001