I am Manikandan AV (1981), a photographer based in Bengaluru. After my degree in Fine Arts (BFA-2002), I started to work in the Animation industry. After practicing photography for several years, I quit my job in 2015 and started to work as a full-time photographer.

In the last 20 years, India is going through an economic spring. Its middle class is getting a chance to splurge like their former rulers. As a society that was in deprivation for four centuries, it is affected in two ways. It has lost all its cultural roots, and it is now indulging in the consumerism vehemently.

The growth of the economy is not in proportion with cultural and social developments. So achieving financial freedom is easier than finding individual freedom. The society is still conservative in every aspect except for consumerism. A society without any real understanding of its culture led the culture to become a material for politics.

For the rest of the world, India is either eccentric or exotic. But how is life for a middle-class Indian today? What odds are they facing to thrive in a globalized world? What does it mean to live in India now?

All my work is coming from these dialectics of globalization, stereotyping, cultural politics and urban experience. I am trying to create a meaningful existence by connecting contemporary life with the roots, in a secular way. This method needs a discursive narrative, so I prefer to work in photo book format.