A Kolkata

A remote collaboration that rebuilds Kolkata from other people's photographs, holding the city at the distance of memory, data, and desire.

Still from A Kolkata showing a misty digital streetscape with a yellow taxi, stacked signs, and a cyclist assembled from photogrammetric fragments.

A Kolkata is a video work developed within the Indo-European Residency Project Kolkata 2021 after the residency moved online during the pandemic. Working remotely with four Kolkata-based photographers, May asked each collaborator to record objects that shaped their movement through the city. Those photographs were rebuilt as 3D models through photogrammetry and brought together into a drifting, dreamlike city assembled from fragments, distance, and shared attention.

That distance is the point. A Kolkata refuses the fiction of seamless virtual access and instead lets the city remain incomplete, assembled through other people’s routes and acts of looking. The work brings May’s concern with memory into the territory of travel and place, asking what kind of knowledge an image can offer when lived experience is unavailable.

Additional notes

  • Video and soundtrack by Alex May.
  • Created within the framework of the Indo-European Residency Project Kolkata 2021, supported by EUNIC in collaboration with the British Council, Kolkata.
  • Developed remotely during pandemic restrictions.
  • Built from photogrammetry models generated from photographs by Neel Bhattacharjee, Bappaditya Dasgupta, Ritaban Ghosh, and Rohan Mukherjee.
  • Format: MP4/H.264 video, 1920 x 1080 pixels.
  • Duration: 6 minutes 36 seconds.

Talks, exhibitions, and updates connected to this work.

  • [Digital] Transmissions

    A Kolkata was shown in [Digital] Transmissions at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, growing out of a British Council Jordan development programme for artists and creative practitioners.

  • Videoclub: DeNatured

    A Kolkata was included in Both Sides Now 7: DeNatured, an international moving-image programme presented across venues in the UK and Hong Kong.

  • Chennai Photogrammetry Workshop

    Alex May led a two-day online photogrammetry workshop for photographers in Chennai, commissioned by Chennai Photo Biennale and supported by the British Council.

  • EyeMyth Media Arts Festival 2022

    Alex May gave an online talk for EyeMyth Media Arts Festival in India about the development of his work A Kolkata.

  • Indo-European Residency Inaugural Programme

    Alex May joined the inaugural programme for the fourth edition of the Indo-European Residency Project Kolkata, introducing his practice and the interests that would shape the residency.

  • Indo-European Residency Project Kolkata 2021

    Alex May was selected for the fourth edition of the Indo-European Residency Project Kolkata, which moved online in 2021 and later led to the development of A Kolkata.

Selected images

Still from A Kolkata showing a misty digital streetscape with a yellow taxi, stacked signs, and a cyclist assembled from photogrammetric fragments.
Awakening
Still from A Kolkata showing a canal-side street with fragmented walls, broken clay vessels, and rippling black water.
Broken Vessels
Still from A Kolkata showing a hand pump, carts, and surrounding buildings in a foggy terrain built from photogrammetric fragments.
Endless Love
Still from A Kolkata showing a grove of cut tree stumps topped with camera-like forms in a hazy digital landscape.
Forest of Stories