About

Suraj Bhamra is a photographer investigating the American landscape, the people who reside in it either willingly or unwillingly, and the broader peripheral connections to the ideas surrounding American exceptionalism, the American dream, and the often harsh but rich realities of new immigrants and the communities in which they reside.

 Criss-crossing America on his own accord and documenting these sentiments, Suraj’s work has spanned well over a decade and has realized this documentation onto black and white photographic film colorized with the stories and scenes of contemporary America.

 The work is as much about Suraj’s experience as a son of Indian immigrants as it is about the larger contextual American identity itself. This personal narrative filters in and out of the work and is informed by childhood experiences such as navigating a post 9/11 America that treated immigrants with derision, but also by a strong national identity through a military career.

 These personal dualities dance on the same stage as our nations fickle political identities that are informed by thin soundbites and a dizzying political cycle that result in a miasma that leaves us wondering who we are and what will become of us.

 The photographic perspective shown in Suraj’s work is ultimately that of a participant rather than one of an observer, and because of this perspective, the work errs toward a thermometer monitoring an overheating nation rather than taking the form of a visual arbitration of ourselves.