Noema - Preface

In this book, text and photographs are in harmony; a window to each other. The totality of the experience is carried by two different mediums: the poems, and the photographs. Both of these mediums, for me, are more than just representations of reality.

Half of my life is behind me. That is perhaps a very big assumption. It could very well turn out that most of my life is behind me. What I have realised, and I have been wrong about most things, is that life is pain and beauty. Only through creation of beauty have I been able to endure the pain, in all its majestic incarnations. We walk alone. There are travellers, but only by the night. We walk alone with our trepidation and uncertainty. Only an inauthentic forbearance has seen me through. This search of beauty has led me to writing and photographing. Both of which are presented in this book. Individually and as one.

Words and poems come to me from somewhere beyond, I do not know from where. They come like a revelation, which I accept in all the humility of a pilgrim. Photography saves me because it gives me rhythm of process and mechanics.

I leave the interpretation of my poems and photographs to you. Like all works of art, it is a response to the milieu that I find myself in. I have imagined this book of poetry and images as a dialectical work; between images and text, between text and you, and hopefully between you and others, including me. Personal reading must also be an internal dialogue. Understanding is to be built together.

May 2024,
Mohit Khodidas