Sameer Raichur’s diaristic photographs of life during quarantine find new meaning in the everyday.

In May 2020, Sameer Raichur's photo of a backlit and silhouetted figure standing between a floral curtain and a window stopped me in my daily, quarantined Instagram doom scroll. The curtain, billowed by a breeze, seemed inhabited by a ghost. It’s the type of dark, whispy photo that Instagram’s algorithm loves, but goes beyond a tropey reference to the obvious existential metaphors one might associate with Kevin Spacey’s film “American Beauty,” and into something more authentically self-reflective. Tenderness, fear, isolation, and so many more emotions neatly – but not too neatly - rolled into a single photograph.

Raichur's caption reflects the image's vulnerability, uncertainty, and softness. “Life seems to have settled into a rhythm during lockdown. A usual day involves visiting the same spots in the house and at particular times, chasing the light,” the photographer notes. For Raichur, it became an ongoing struggle against meaninglessness, a celebration of the moments that might not have registered in previous times.
“Checking on pigeons hanging out on the edges of our windows,” Raichur writes, “watching my curtain blowing in the wind and endless staring out of balconies and windows, praying for the unexpected.”

This is but one image in a series that illustrates Raichur’s often hallucinatory visual response to isolation. It brought up childhood memories, reexaminations of family life, and newfound pleasures in the simple joys he might not have appreciated otherwise. Nearly a year into lockdown, I connected with Raichur to learn more about how he uses photography to cope and stay balanced.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Sameer Raichur