Kalpesh Lathigra

Lathigra was born and raised in east London.{{cite news|first1=Sean|last1=O'Hagan|access-date=2023-03-22|title=The ghosts of Wounded Knee: travels through the scene of a massacre|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/17/the-ghosts-of-wounded-knee-travels-through-the-scene-of-a-massacre|newspaper=The Guardian|date=17 February 2016|issn=0261-3077}} His family migrated from Junagadh, India to the UK via Kenya and Zanzibar over three generations, before he was born.{{cite web|first1=Joanna|last1=Cresswell|access-date=2023-03-22|title=Kalpesh Lathigra travels to Mumbai, considering what life could have been had his family not migrated to the UK|url=https://www.1854.photography/2021/02/kalpesh-lathigra-memoire-temporelle/|website=British Journal of Photography}}{{cite news|first1=Tim|last1=Adams|access-date=2023-03-22|title=The big picture: an insider-outsider's view of Mumbai|url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/31/the-big-picture-mumbai-memoire-temporelle-kalpesh-lathigra|newspaper=The Guardian|date=31 July 2022|issn=0261-3077}}

He earned a postgraduate diploma in photojournalism at the London College of Printing. He worked as a photojournalist for newspapers from 1994 to 2000, then on long term projects and magazine and commercial assignments. Around this time he moved away from photojournalism.

Lost in the Wilderness (2015) revisits the scene of the Wounded Knee Massacre, where in 1890, the United States Army killed nearly three hundred Lakota people. Sean O'Hagan, reviewing the book in The Guardian, wrote that "Lost in the Wilderness moves between the intimate and the subtlety [sic] symbolic. It captures the reality of life on the reservations – the flat, barren land, drab rooms, careworn faces – as well as some moments of dark irony".

Memoire Temporelle (2022), explores the limbo of Lathigra's own lack of belonging in the UK or India, "without needing to resolve it." Translated as temporal memory, the book was made between 2016 and 2019 across eight trips he made to Mumbai. The disparate objects and scenes, shot in both black-and-white and colour, are "emotional resonances" for Lathigra given he could have lived in Mumbai had his family not migrated. The photographs are punctuated with translated extracts from the writings of India's Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, and poems by Lathigra.

Lathigra has an ongoing project called A Democratic Portrait in which he makes portraits using a Polaroid Studio Express—a simple four-lens instant film camera typically used to make passport photos.{{cite web|first1=Gem|last1=Fletcher|access-date=2023-03-22|title=Kalpesh Lathigra's passport photos question issues of egalitarianism, hierarchy and privilege|url=https://www.1854.photography/2023/02/kalpesh-lathigra-a-democratic-portrait/|website=British Journal of Photography}}

• Lost in the Wilderness. London: self-published, 2015. {{ISBN|978-0993469503}}. With an essay by Garvard Goodplume Jr.
• Memoire Temporelle = temporal memory. 2022. {{ISBN|978-1-7397718-0-5}}. With translated extracts of writings by Rabindranath Tagore, and poems by Lathigra.{{cite web|access-date=2023-03-22|title=Art shows to leave the house for this October|url=https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/57123/1/art-exhibitions-shows-london-new-york-october-2022-frieze-guide|date=10 October 2022|website=Dazed}}

• 2000: 1st prize, Arts and Entertainment category, World Press Photo, Amsterdam

• The Tree of a Man named Beohha – Becontree Now, Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 2021/22. A study of the Becontree estate, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.{{cite web|access-date=2023-03-23|title=New exhibitions inspired by Becontree Estate centenary to go on display|url=https://www.barkinganddagenhampost.co.uk/lifestyle/20906229.new-exhibitions-inspired-becontree-estate-centenary-go-display/|website=Barking and Dagenham Post}}

• Facing Britain: British Documentary Photography since the 1960s, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany, 2021/22{{cite web|access-date=2023-03-23|title=Facing BritainBritish Documentary Photography since the 1960s|url=https://www.kunsthalle-darmstadt.de/Program_3_1_gid_1_pid_606.html|website=www.kunsthalle-darmstadt.de}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website|www.kalpeshlathigra.com}}
• [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/feb/17/native-american-wounded-knee-massacre-in-pictures Photographs from Lost in the Wilderness] at The Guardian

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Category:21st-century British photographers

Category:Photographers from London

Category:Alumni of the London College of Printing

Category:English people of Indian descent

Category:Living people

Category:1971 births