Urban Coincidence

What are the odds that two photographer-designers from India and Thailand, strangers to each other, could capture the everydayness of the spaces they travelled to, and find a multitude of common visuals? Is it called coincidence? This collection of photographs is a cross-cultural collaboration between Ragini Siruguri from India and Wuthipol Ujathammarat from Thailand. It explores visual similarities in their styles of capturing colour, composition and culture.

Urban Coincidence is built on patterns of seeing. It was intriguing for us to discover an uncanny similarity in the way we saw lines, shapes and colours through our lenses. Each pair of photographs in this collection is a sample of a distinct urban aesthetic with synchronised colours and textures. This set collectively becomes a new body of images with blurry geographical boundaries, leaving the viewer guessing their origin and context.

This project took shape organically, as we found photographs that were strikingly alike — and were often linked in ways that went beyond visual connections. Along the way, we began wondering if this could become an investigation into a possible shared cultural history of India and Thailand. Or is it simply sheer coincidence?

This box contains 19 pairs of ‘coincidences’ from India and Thailand. Match the pairs and guess which country the photos were taken in. What determines your decision?

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Exhibitions:
→ Tokyo Virtual Art Book Fair, 2020