Joanna Cresswell in Lensculture:
There is a particular collage in Indian photographer Devashish Gaur’s project This Is The Closest We Will Get that stands out in its cut-and-paste simplicity. Entitled Me and Dad, it’s a portrait, black and white, cropped at the shoulders, but most importantly, it depicts two men instead of one. The sitter of the original photograph—an archival one that’s been collaged over—wears a checkered suit and his hair is neatly swept to the side. It feels formal, perhaps a little dated even. Meanwhile, slices of a second face, arranged over this sitter, belong to his son—the photographer, Gaur himself. And their features, the contours and outlines of their faces, do seem to blend quite remarkably. Father and boy, artist and sitter, portrait and self-portrait, entwined.
Blending new images, archival pictures and digital re-workings, This Is The Closest We Will Get began in 2019, after Gaur discovered photographs of his grandfather during the renovation of his family home. His grandfather had died before he was born, and yet his family had always told him how alike they were in habits and interests, so these pictures fascinated him. How strange it was, he says, to resemble someone he’d never known. Thus the project in the first instance was a visual depiction and recollection of memories and conversations about his grandfather.
More here.