GHAR

Melbourne-based photographic artist Anu Kumar uses photography to explore the relationship between identity, family and belonging. Born in India and raised in Australia, Kumar has spent much of her practice examining what it means to feel connected to a place and a cultural heritage. Working primarily with medium-format photography, she pays close attention to the details of everyday life, often finding meaning in gestures, familiar objects and quiet moments. Her photographs are less concerned with defining identity than with understanding it through the people and places that shape her experience.

Ghar, meaning “home” in Hindi, began when Kumar returned to her birthplace of Kavi Nagar, India, at the age of 21. Having grown up in Australia, she initially felt unsure of her place there and began photographing as a way to better understand her heritage. What started as an exercise in observation gradually developed into a five-year project, as she spent time with her family and became more familiar with the rhythms of their daily lives. The resulting photographs reflect a growing sense of connection, built not through a single moment of discovery but through repeated visits, shared time and everyday encounters.

Within Ghar, Kumar turns her camera towards the family home, its courtyards and the surrounding streets. Portraits of relatives sit alongside details of daily routines: a hand resting on a surface, clothes draped over a body, or the objects that remain part of a familiar domestic setting. Rather than documenting only significant occasions, she focuses on the quieter moments that make up family life.

Her medium-format photographs capture the textures of these environments with care, preserving gestures and rituals that might otherwise go unrecorded. Together, the images form a personal archive of the people, habits and spaces through which family history is passed between generations.

The project also reflects on the distance that can exist between a person and their cultural background. For Kumar, returning to India was not simply a homecoming, but an opportunity to build a relationship with a place she had known since childhood without fully understanding her own connection to it. The process of photographing her family became a way of spending time together, allowing familiarity to develop gradually. Published as a photobook by Perimeter Editions in 2022, Ghar also took on another meaning during the COVID-19 pandemic, when international travel restrictions separated families across borders. The photographs became a record of closeness, as well as a reminder of what distance can make difficult to maintain.

For Kumar, documenting her family is an ongoing process rather than a closed chapter. Her photographs preserve not only the appearance of people and places, but also the small details through which memories are formed and relationships are maintained. There is no single definition of home within Ghar. It emerges through familiar surroundings, inherited traditions and the time spent with others. By paying attention to these everyday experiences, Kumar creates a body of work that is deeply personal while speaking to a wider experience of navigating identity across cultures and generations.