Why does the moon follow us everywhere we go?

Being born on Earth is, in itself, a big yet small event. The question, “Why does the moon follow us everywhere we go?”, which I first heard from my grandmother, has stayed with me. In fact, scientifically speaking, the moon does not follow us; its apparent stillness is an illusion. I began to see a similar parallax between human presence and land. Although land appears immovable, human extraction and development transform it irreversibly.

In Rajsamand in the Indian state of Rajasthan, for example, granite mining has reshaped landscapes that were once defined by natural formations, deities and rituals. The Bhopa community, who are priest-singers of folk gods, remain rooted to these sites and return on full and new moon days. Their persistence raises questions about belonging and possession: is their relationship with the land a spiritual attachment that cannot be seen, touched or measured?

Conceived and developed during my time at the National Institute of Design in India, this project explores how power becomes embedded in land through zoning, mining, ownership and commodification, while the land itself continues to hold cultural, spiritual and ecological narratives that resist such reduction. Through photographs of quarries, landforms, rituals and community life, I examine how human activity imposes identities on places and whether land has an identity that exists independently of these impositions.

Photography is to my practice both a method and a means of providing evidence here. It documents shifts in the landscape, while also capturing gestures, expressions and presences that are often excluded from official records. My approach draws on a Buddhist way of seeing: zooming in like an insect and expanding out like a mountain, revealing scales of power from the intimate to the territorial. Working with the Bhopas was slow and patient; many are elderly and unaccustomed to being photographed. Their faces, eyes, and silences hold testimonies that resist the administrative logics of land ownership and extraction. To create images that reflect what the land itself holds, I also worked with found objects and soil samples treating them as living archives of place and used them in photographic processes, allowing the material of the land to speak through the image.

Preksha Kothari took part in our Face-to-Face educational feedback program with Guest Reviewer and Curator Sarker Protik.