Objects are created for a purpose but occupy a part of the natural environment that causes tension between them and their surroundings. Man-made superstructures are utilitarian and have a history attached to them. A ship for example carries within it many memories and stories. It marks a route from it’s making to it’s travels. Against the backdrop of a vast ocean, a ship reminds us of its inconsequential scale but the moment it reaches a shore its mammoth scale is realized against the background of a beach.

© Shovan Gandhi
© Shovan Gandhi
© Shovan Gandhi

This is Alang, a town on the coast of Gujarat, where the landscape is dominated, defined and demographically shaped by its industrial function of ship breaking. Each ship that sets it’s course for Alang, it is their last journey, they have performed their functions and are decommissioned. Once a dysfunctional object like a ship becomes in-congruent to its habitat it is reduced to it’s materiality. This shifting of material, economies and the act of re-appropriation of an object is a violent yet regenerative.