When I stepped out

Photographer Priyadarshini Ravichandran documents tentative impressions of the outside when she steps out after months of a stringent lockdown.

This wasn’t a hurried grocery run, an emergency move or an anxious visit, but a journey taken for the joy of being in the outside. In these photographs, Priyadarshini takes a moment to observe everything that has changed. Tentative touch is reserved for that which belongs to nature, for only that seems truly safe. Much is observed from afar with a guarded reserve that threatens to become permanent for many of us. She captures fleeting impressions of things left behind, allowed to teem without interference like flowers that have gathered in an undisturbed fuchsia carpet and dead moths blooming in old plastic.

“I called up Meera. No- I only texted her.

I find it difficult to speak to anyone on the phone some days, but I miss my friends.

I sent her these photos I had taken the first time I stepped out. Everything I happened to glimpse.

That was also the evening I saw my mother from inside the car and felt the urge to touch her. 

I imagine all of us are now living the same life. For many it is unimaginably harder and even impossible.

Every little thought, every single photograph seems to come back like an echo.

I cannot really explain what grasps me, however I do feel a sense of relief. 

I still haven’t called Meera.”

Priyadarshini Ravichandran