Gomma Photography Grant 2025
The Geography of Forgetting
Photographer
Samik Mondal
The Geography of Forgetting
14 Feb, 2026
In The Geography of Forgetting, I photograph the quiet transformations of familiar landscapes in rural Bengal — places shaped by memory, migration, and time. My images move between the documentary and the dreamlike, tracing how human presence lingers even after disappearance. Through unfinished buildings, empty roads, and solitary trees, I observe how progress and decay often coexist within the same frame. The work reflects on absence as both a political and emotional condition, asking how memory survives change and how forgetting becomes part of what remains.
About the photographer
Samik Mondal
Samik Mondal is a visual artist, filmmaker, and photographer based in Kolkata, India. His practice explores the intersections of memory, landscape, and disappearance — examining how personal histories and social change intertwine within the Indian landscape. Trained at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka, he brings a layered sensibility to visual storytelling that moves between documentary and the dreamlike. His recent work, The Geography of Forgetting, reflects on disappearance and belonging in the shifting terrains of rural Bengal. Through a restrained visual language, he investigates what endures after presence fades — tracing the emotional and political textures of everyday life.
