WIP.
Eeshan and His Friends is a collaborative project between myself and curator Eeshan Banerjee, in which we will be spending one year conducting research into friendship. With Eeshan as my focal interlocutor, his personal relationships will be the main subject of our study.
The project will utilise the method of ethnography/participant observation; a qualitative research tool where the researcher immerses themselves within the context of their study in order to investigate, describe and understand a specific phenomena about the human experience. We will examine behaviour, interactions, expressions, opinions, structures, habits, gestures, language and feelings through observational, dialogical and visual techniques. In order to do so, we will be facilitating interactive workshops where together we will reflect on the topic through interviews, portrait sessions, anonymous surveys, letter-writing, reenactments, collage-making, childhood photo-elicitation, filmmaking, etc. The material created in these workshops, alongside reflections from Eeshan and myself, will form the contents of an ethnographic photobook.
While we aren’t attempting to distill the essence of friendship, or even to define it, we do aim to create an honest documentation of it through the specific example of this group, in this place, at this moment. Despite being so ubiquitous, friendship is often overlooked in both academia and art. It is an elusive phenomena; an unformalised mode of relationality based upon a unique type of reliance. Arguably, an essential component of a life well lived...but a complex, multifaceted one, so worthy of inquiry. We believe that the topic of friendship will provoke thought on our concepts of love, possession, ritual, secrecy, memory, mimicry, exchange, performance, loneliness, masculinity, collective memory, freedom, home, affection, safety, mutuality, belonging, attachment, cultural intersections, place, resolution, reliance, jealousy, obligation, trust, competition, physicality, conflict and identity (to name a few). Most prominently, we predict it will bring up poignant questions on how individuals perceive their own personhood; How is it that we understand ourselves through friendship? How far can one disclose oneself to another?
We want to show how the most expansive studies into the human condition are ones that are collaborative, reflexive, adaptive, creative and mutually-beneficial to subjects, and hopefully audiences too. Where Eeshan and I are gaining answers and support in the development of the project from our subjects, we will be providing them with the space and tools for introspection, expression and community. Something we also hope to be offering to our readers.
It was important to us that we planned to publish this project in a photobook and not an academic paper. As well as being an accessible mode of presentation, photobooks are a private possession; something to be returned to over and over again in the solace of one’s own space, and then to be shared intimately. We believe that it is in these conditions that we are most likely to provoke self-questioning and empathy.
In the spirit of being reflexive, I would like to admit that I think my personal attraction to this theme was not entirely academically-objective (which I don't think it needn't be, for no good work would come from that). Subconsciously, I believe I have orchestrated an excuse to take photographs of someone else’s friendships because friendship has often perplexed me, and has sometimes caused me strife. Since photographing is my way of standing apart in order to work something out, this project is certainly a way for me to bring up a difficult conversation to myself. As researcher, I feel that it would be somewhat impossible, and dishonest, to omit my own feelings on the process from the reflections I will write during the project's progression.
If you would like to keep up with the development of Eeshan and His Friends, follow me on Instagram @dylan57elliott
