Leaving Home, Coming Home
This is an excerpt from my 2019 monograph — Leaving Home, Coming Home — that is available for pre-order and purchase here, with worldwide shipping. The 65 page monograph is a traveler’s tale of defining the meaning of home, told through black and white photography, while on travel, in Charleston, South Carolina.
The rains had stopped but threatened to start again without notice. Under a gloomy sky, pierced by the occasional bolt of sunlight, puddles of water pooled up everywhere, forcing pedestrians on the sidewalk to reluctantly abandon the efficient straight line for a drunken zig-zag.
The beauty and the politeness in these palmetto lined streets, belies a difficult past in constant need of retelling: one of fecund plantations and the horrors of a transatlantic slave trade that gilded the antebellum years, brothers who fought on both sides of the Civil war followed by a century long gestation to a physical and cultural rebirth — the beginning of the Charleston Renaissance that would bring back an interest in the arts and a drive for historic preservation.
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see — Martin Luther King, Jr.
I stepped through the timeworn alleyways and followed the perfume of the camellias and gardenias beckoning from behind wrought iron gates. Feeling momentarily unmoored, I contemplated my situation. After a lifetime of traveling, home is defined more by people than place. And so, home is found here, there, and sometimes nowhere.
The rains, long gone by now, clung to life in the puddles that reflected back the street scene. Walking alone, slowly stalking, camera dangling from my right hand by a thin leather loop around the wrist, I watched for the shadows. The weathered facade on a parade of row houses spun stories of traditions, manners and lost grace. No longer alone on the sidewalk, there was an implicit solitude in walking — a disconnect that you can feel even in the presence of others. Amidst the muted sunlight, filtered by the rustling oaks, a solitary walker crossed my path, their silhouette stalking them under the piazzas of the Charleston single house.
Shourya Ray is an award winning documentary photographer based in the greater Washington, DC area. Follow him on Instagram and on Medium at ShouryaRay.com.
This is an excerpt from my 2019 monograph — Leaving Home, Coming Home — that is available for pre-order and purchase here, with worldwide shipping. The 65 page monograph is a traveler’s tale of defining the meaning of home, told through black and white photography, while on travel, in Charleston, South Carolina.
