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<h1 class="left">In the little, isolated town of Landsmeer outside of Amsterdam, two brown-skinned, light-eyed boys spent their days skateboarding blithely. A sight that stood out in stark contrast against the backdrop of their very white, suburban, Dutch neighbourhood.</h1>

<h1 class="left">When a racist remark was tossed their way owing to their appearance, Kay Nambiar and his younger brother knew better than to let the hurt get to them. Their immigrant father had instilled in them an unbridled love for life, after all.</h1>

<h1 class="left">An emotion that has shaped much of the thought behind the photographer’s work, and the trajectory of his hopes.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Hailing from the South Indian state of Kerala, Kay’s father’s family had migrated to Fiji and then San Francisco in the United States. His father, in true hippie fashion of the times, had flown across the world and made a home for himself in Amsterdam where he met his wife. As a product of this exchange between an Indian man and a Dutch woman, was born Kay’s identity of cultural loneliness – which often attempts to conceal itself but slips out in the incongruity of his dark hair and green eyes.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">It’s a loneliness he’s accustomed to now, fond of even. It weaves itself in and out of his experiences with people and inhabits his photography.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Kay’s camera served as the tool with which he makes sense of his external world. Three years ago, he ventured into fashion photography, taking portraits of his friends as models– but he finds that his heart is entangled with travel and documentary photography. He grew up listening to his father extolling the virtues of travelling with hunger, meeting new people, and letting them shape and reshape your reality.</h1>

<h1 class="left">This advice translates into his imagery when he stumbles out into the streets of a city with his camera for company.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Growing up in Landsmeer, Kay’s interaction with his Indian half was limited to the visits he made to the United States, where his father’s relatives reside. Here, despite the warmth of his family and the connection he felt as a joyful participant in their rituals, he remained all too aware of his role as a detached outsider.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Brown, but not brown enough. One of the only people of colour in his white town.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Like many in the diaspora, he’d longed to visit India growing up, but never found himself prepared enough. Life, as he knew it, was lived in a cultural limbo. Perhaps a visit to the country would undo this loneliness he’s grown so attached to. His prominent features would ensure he fits in. The long lost son who finally found his way back home.</h1>

<h1 class="left">The first time he landed in India in November of 2022– nothing changed.</h1>

<h1 class="left">No triumphant immersion, no people mistaking him for a local, no tears rolling down as he embraced his truth.</h1>

<h1 class="left">His Europeanness stuck out smugly for people to perceive.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">In the time he spent in the country, he came to realise that visiting India was not an act of homecoming at all. It simply reaffirmed that the detachment he felt was strangely, the wonderful kind.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">He recognised the kindness and hospitality he saw in himself in the people he met.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">His loneliness poured into every photograph taken on a bustling street corner in the mid-morning sun, no single shot being predetermined.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">His work encapsulates his view of the country that belongs to him, in part.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">All-consuming and isolating all at once, his images, like his identity, are a personal act of meaning-making.</h1>

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