East of Memory Book Launch
Drawn from a larger archive of transience and place, Srinivas Kuruganti’s body of work in New York spans sixteen years, seen through the lens of the 1990s. It traces the turbulence of friendships, protests, and the experiences of a life built among others. Across these photographs, sexuality unfolds as lived textures: embodied desire, kinship, gesture, nearness, celebration. We encounter bodies and lives inhabiting the street with urgency and presence, resisting category and typology even as race, migration and identity continue to shape the sociopolitical conditions around them. Within this, Srinivas’ own position—of youth, of precarity, and of distinct South Asian identity—becomes palpable through the shifting relationships that the photographs hold, and in turn, produce in this moment anew.
Scale fluctuates, colour surges and recedes, bodies blur into motion. The energy of 1990s New York is riotous, set aflame with the high pressure of political protest, the weight of collective responsibility, the nakedness—sometimes quite literal—of appearing publicly and together. Friendship becomes the image-making structure, a powerfully relational scaffold through which the communal settles into familial texture. Srinivas himself notes, “Images can go wrong. Really wrong.” It is precisely this openness to misdirection, that this excerpt—and his larger archive-making practice—leans into.
Up close with these photographs, they produce a familiality built through movement: through the residues and morphing textures of community and belonging that emerge when people gather, protest, desire, and survive together. The beauty then, as he suggests, lies in the simplicity of the frame: in that act of looking and hoping to know. A knowing that presents the inevitability of time; a choreography of bodies passing through light.
-Annalisa Mansukhani
*Originally written for the group exhibition Moving the Bones at Shrine Empire, New Delhi (29 May–24 June 2026).
This book is about those years—the friends I made, the apartments I lived in, the bars I spent too much time in, the protests I photographed, and the odd jobs that paid the rent while I tried to become a photographer. Some of the people in these pages are still in my life. Many are not. A few of them have died.
Photography gave me a reason to wander the city and connect with people I might never have met otherwise. Through the camera, I found friendship, purpose, and a sense of belonging.
These stories are not a history of New York. They are my memories of a time and place, told as I remember them. Some of these stories are funny, some are painful and some still surprise me when I think about them now.
-Srinivas Kuruganti
Book Specifications-
232 pages 8.6 x 6.5 inches
Publication date: December 2026
Section sewn hardbound
ISBN: 978-93-5943-325-7
Editions- 400 copies priced at Rs
*All books will be numbered
Prices are inclusive of shipping within India
*For international payments/prices, please email me at srinivaskuruganti@gmail.com
Payment information
UPI -Payments can be made via UPI to this number 8800723394 OR srinivaskuruganti@okhdfcbank
Bank transfer- Srinivas Sesha Kuruganti HDFC Bank 14, Anand Lok, New Delhi, 110049 savings Account no: 50100515365294 IFSC: HDFC0000482
IMPORTANT: Be sure to add your name in the note/payment remarks
Once you have made the payment, please send a screenshot along with the following to my email address at EastofMemory@gmail.com
*In Subject– Book Sale Confirmation
*For special edition orders please email or whastapp me
Special Editions
S-toned silver gelatin archival fiber prints are avaiable with the book for Rs
Size: 8.6in x 5.7in
Dawings printed on Hannemuhle photo rag are available with the book for Rs
Size: 8.6in x width varies
*Please reach out to me directly for prices if youre interested in buying the original drawings.