Photographer Anu Kumar had never seen much of India from an intimate lens although she was born there. Raised in Melbourne, her connection to India, she admits was “kind of tenuous”. As a child, she made the obligatory trip back to the motherland every two years. All that changed when she started going on her own—with a camera.

Kumar’s curious exploration and journey of self-discovery in the world of photography began ten years ago. She was 21 and studying Occupational Therapy when she failed in her exams. That gave her two options—to redo the course or quit. She chose the latter.

“After that I was lost and didn’t know what my next step would be,” she says.

But she ended up travelling to India and Nepal for the next six months. “It was a trip to get out of Melbourne and do something for myself. Up until then, I was on a very planned path.”

With her entry-level DSLR camera, gifted to her by her father, Kumar discovered her passion for photography and fell in love with capturing images during her travels. She ended up taking a multitude of photographs.

When she came back to Melbourne, Kumar enrolled at RMIT for a Bachelor’s degree in Commercial Photography. “It did feel quite right, something I hadn’t felt previously in high school with my academic studies,” she says.

Within that time, while studying, Kumar also landed a job as a photojournalist with The Age. “I felt the world was responding, I felt it was something I was good at,” she says.

Kumar’s photography has been published in the New York Times, Vogue Italia was exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Photography (2022). Currently, some of her works are being featured at the Melbourne Now exhibition, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.

Last October, Kumar published her first book Ghar, a product of her seven-year-long travels to Kavi Nagar, India, where she documented her life and the life of her extended family there. She says the process of writing the book was a fulfilling one as it facilitated a deeper connection with India, her family and she was able to include everything.

The Melbourne Now exhibition showcases seven images from the book. “They contain images of my aunts and uncles and things such as my grandfather’s crockery set. They have significant meanings,” she explains.

Kumar was born in Kavi Nagar in Ghaziabad, India, but was just eight-months old when her family migrated to Australia. “Throughout my childhood, my family would visit Kavi Nagar every two years in the hope me and my brother would remain connected to our Indian heritage. The images, made during daily 4pm walks with my aunts, represent a starting point. The beginning of a sustained effort to reconnect with and understand my heritage.”

Being Indian, says Kumar, is a huge part of who she is, a fact that she is very proud of. But on top of that, her work has also facilitated a deeper connection with the community and the diaspora here. “It has allowed me to engage with a lot of people that are curious about the work and find something that feels quite familiar and nostalgic to them. It is nice to be able to inspire something in other people and I am getting to know all the plus side of this on my journey. It was never the intention when I started.”

Kumar works primarily with medium format photography, a type of photography that uses larger film or sensor sizes than traditional 35mm film or digital cameras. This larger size provides several advantages, including higher image resolution, better colour accuracy, and greater dynamic range.

“That also makes me selective of the images I take and helps me tone my intuition. It is a format I have fallen in love with,” she says, especially, because being waist level cameras, they allow her to engage with her subjects.

Kumar uses a Hasselblad and a cheaper Yashica Mat-124 G, which she got through Gumtree. Asked her views on phone cameras, she says, “They take great photos and the actual quality of them is amazing. I know many photographers who have come up with amazing projects using them.” But despite the availability of digital cameras, she finds the use of film to be more immersive allowing her to fully engage with her craft.

While photography remains her biggest passion, Kumar finds joy in cooking with her mother, an activity that strengthens her connection to her cultural heritage. Additionally, she has a keen interest in fashion and the way fabrics drape and fall.

For her subjects, Kumar is the discover. For someone who believes she was never “too articulate”, Kumar has found photography to journal her life in a fluid language.

“It is me working through my curiosity, interests in trying to figure out of who I am. It’s more of a journey, rather than a full stop.”

(Melbourne Now at The Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia, Fed Square is open till 20 August)

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