Other Worlds Within: Arhant Shrestha’s Between Space and Memory

Arhant Shrestha grew up in a city that he was not allowed to see. Like the child peeking through the curtains in the first image of his series Between Space and Memory (2021–), Shrestha spent much of his early adolescence gazing into the spaces beyond the confines of his tangible environment—from the physical boundaries of home to the expectations of performing gender.

Through his photographs, Shrestha explores the fantasy nighttime world he would dream about as a child growing up in Kathmandu, Nepal. With protective parents and a naturally introverted nature, he recalls spending much of his time imagining what may lie outside his immediate surroundings. While his adult years gave him the opportunity to experience the reality of Kathmandu firsthand, Shrestha found it important to explore the sense of the unknown that the city had held in his childhood memories. “I made these pictures to capture the nostalgia of my past imagination before the reality of my adult life could wash it away,” he shared in a conversation with the author.

Although Shrestha had always felt an affinity with the camera, he first started to make images with intentionality during his studies at Bard College. It was there that he began to see photography as an expressive form capable of uncovering worlds and realities. He began this recent series of images solely as an exploration of his relationship with Kathmandu, but found himself also touching on his personal relationship to gender, a theme which runs as an undercurrent throughout Shrestha’s work.

Shrestha’s mother and grandmother appear in many of his pictures. Perhaps due to his proximity to the women in his family, Shrestha found that when he explored this imaginary Kathmandu, he would navigate it as a woman. For him, his mother and grandmother were akin to mystical deities who could access worlds that he could not. It was through them, vicariously, that Shrestha embarked on his expeditions into his make-believe nighttime world.

Arhant’s photographs have a mystical pull to them—the vivid colours that emerge from dark hazy spaces; the subjects that include his family, friends, and himself; and the moments that he chooses to capture that express multiple layers of meaning. The longer one spends looking at his pictures, the more they begin to tell a detailed story with a past, present, and possible future. Shrestha’s photographs construct, through an almost childlike wonder and mysticism, an identity of the city he inhabits and what it means to him. This album includes selections from the series, presenting a coming-of-age through the interiority of family and the discovery of a city.

To learn more about explorations of public and personal experiences of gender in Nepal, read Sukanya Deb’s essay on Nepal Picture Library’s Feminist Memory Project and a curated album from this archive on Parijat, a renowned literary figure. Also read Shranup Tandukar’s reviews of Prasuna Dongol’s Before You Were My Mother (2022) and Rajan Kathet and Sunir Pandey’s Dhorpatan (No Winter Holidays, 2023). 

All images from Between Space and Memory (2021–) by Arhant Shrestha. Images courtesy of the artist.

Click on the image to view the album