Capturing loneliness

A solo exhibition of street photography ‘Between Loneliness and Solitude’ by Rahul Ghosh, at Goethe Zentrum, featured the photos that reflect urban solitude.

Hyderabad-based Rahul is a street photographer by passion, a psychologist, and educator by profession. In 2008, he moved to the UK to pursue his education and at that time he began exploring the city with his camera. He went on capturing the images of architecture and people in the last 10 years. He has featured 30 collections of photos in the exhibition.

“I mostly capture patterns, symmetric and the different structures on the street that are interesting, and I found so many different types of people who are walking on the street out of the ordinary and that is something I always look for,” says Rahul.

There are two works which are close to his heart, one is ‘a woman walking near a bridge’, and the second is ‘a boy as a backdrop of Martin Luther’s ‘I have a dream wall’. He says, “I captured these people from long distances, at least 100 meters, using a zoom lens I have captured these photos in Australia. I was lonely myself and this manifested in the images. Over time, I realised that solitude had become a theme in many of my pictures and explored it further.”

What was challenging? “The biggest challenge was if I wanted to take a picture I have to take permission of the person/people sometimes and at times they say no but then there is a way of doing that also without causing too much trouble, (laughs) ” ­he shares.