The images in the series "les bleues et les rouges" emerged from my fascination with the female protagonist in Alphonse Mucha’s J.O.B. and Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June. The act of creation of these images, however, turned into an introspective process where I explored the concept of self through the medium of Photography.

 

However, there is also another story here.

 

Early in 2006 my family and I moved into a 1930s house in the old Canberra suburb of Kingston—a turning point for me in many ways.

 

“Worn carpet was pulled up revealing 1950s copies of The Australian Women’s Weekly. This serendipitous moment led Payal to a creative investigation of her identity as a woman.” David Chalker, Director PhotoAccess in the catalogue for the exhibition 'les bleues et les rouges', 2007. 

 

At the same time as I created the visual body of work, I also wrote the novella ‘Interspersed’. The sub story in the novella takes inspiration from the life of the first family to live in my house in Kingston and a parallel time in the subcontinent i.e. the time of partition of India in 1947.