Indian photographer, Manjari Sharma, will be opening a show at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles on January 8th that will run through February 12th, 2011. Manjari will be flying in from Mumbai on February 12th to celebrate the closing (complete with an Indian Food truck), so hope to see you there! The work featured at the Kopeikin Gallery comes from her projects, Shower, the series taken in her shower in New York (where she currently resides) and Water, shot in Brazil along the emerald sea coast.

Image from Shower

Manjari Sharma received her BSC in Visual Communication, from the S.V.T. College in Mumbai. In 2004 she completed her BFA in Media Studies, and Still Photography from Columbus College of Art and Design. The work I am featuring is from a new series, Anastasia. All of Majari’s work has a innate sensuality, and this work is no different. Using color, gesture, and glimpses of intimate moments, Anastasia, creates waking day dreams of life caught between two realities.

Statement for Anastasia: The town I have come to call home is one that echoes two concepts resoundingly, glamor and loneliness. I live in New York City and I met Anastasia, the protagonist of my series over a year ago. Ana came to this country as a foreigner, so did I. While the prospect of gain and glitz and the promise of a better life takes a lot of us travelers to distant shores, an empty void in the heart can remain.

Through extended conversations with Anastasia and having lived overseas for several years now, I have come to believe that there is something common between our sparkling lives in glossy cities, it’s solitude. Whether we hail from the midwest or India, our understanding of loneliness is what binds our fabric as human beings. I used fragmented whispers of Anastasia’s personal life and took on the role of a fiction writer for this project.

A strong realization for me has been how as a society we can all relate to a sense of detachment and isolation, sometimes even as we stand shoulder to shoulder on a crowded subway. Day in and day out our manicured facade continues to lose against our ability to feel lonesome in the lap of noise and company. These images are a commentary on how we choose to pursue a romance with one self which is both exotic yet tragic and lush yet lonely… vulnerably finding our own secret gardens as we walk in and out of reality.