In a series of photographs from an old family album a man’s life unfolds in front of his own lens, like remembered snatches of an old conversation. As observers we see a young Sikh man, dapper, elegant and brimming with enthusiasm for life. The mood of the photographs turn from joy, to contemplation to an unmistakeable melancholy as life takes him along its journey. Within these photos are also a son’s attempt to understand his lost father through his self-portraits comprising photographer Anish Sarai’s ongoing work, ‘Finding my Father’.

Soup spoke to Anish about this moving document of his father’s life where he seeks to know his father who passed away when Anish was only four-years-old. Within this work, Anish gives context to his father’s archive that was formed before, during and after the Sikh riots, leading to his father’s struggle with his identity and eventual struggles with alcoholism. Ultimately we come away with a feeling of having wandered into an intimate conversation between father and son.

Tell us more about the project, and what led you to this journey of finding your father.

I never considered this as a project, it started when I went to my hometown, Indore and found a bunch of old family albums lying in an old cupboard, some of them had already started deteriorating. During the lockdown I had a lot of time at my hand, being a freelancer with no work and no opportunity of getting work anytime soon. I decided to scan all my family photos before they are destroyed by time and neglect. While doing it I realised there was an album of just my father’s portraits which I had never seen before and I kept on thinking about it and tried and understand what kind of person was he and were there any similarities between us. One thing was for sure, he had great photographic sense and aesthetics.

The project attempts to cover the space between loss of identity and struggles with addiction. Do you feel the two are connected?

Not always but a loss of identity can lead to addiction to cope with the loss. I think it was one of the reasons he got into heavy drinking, as after that event of him cutting his hair, people who knew him told me he changed as a person.

A project this personal often tends to make us feel either intensely vulnerable or reach some kind of closure. Did you experience either feeling, how has this work helped your relationship in retrospect?

It was a bit of both as I was feeling these emotions which I never I could feel about him, as I was pretty young when we lost him and it made me feel closer to him and understand him and maybe myself a little more.

How do you intend to further this work?

I am not sure but I would like to add other people’s stories of losing identity about their family members or if they went through a particular experience and also understand the world they were from and what we can learn through their experiences.