Even as more photographers heed the call to document their culture and heritage, capturing the spirit of a people, place or tradition remains no easy feat. Nostalgia often serves as the thread connecting audiences to histories that might otherwise remain out of reach. But what happens when that thread tightens and we become fixated solely on the beauty of an image rather than the narrative it carries? In Tara LC Sood’s work, nostalgia is a vehicle, transporting us through India’s lesser-seen cultures and the lived experiences of its people.

Sood defines much of her work as “staged documentary”, rooted in her childhood, where she was immersed in the vintage aesthetics of India, London and France. “Goa [which was colonised by the Portuguese] had this wonderfully ornate architecture and beautiful heritage homes,” she shares. And her grandmother’s house in the south of France wasn’t far removed – an old, dilapidated farmhouse with “crazy attics and weird pieces like a strange rocking horse”, she adds. “My whole childhood had this sense of vintage between my heritage and European influence.”

Swiftly developing a taste for the unconventional, Sood’s teen years saw her enamoured with the peculiarity of 1970s style and icons such as David Bowie. “Not just David Bowie – Jareth, the Goblin King, Bowie,” she asserts. This love for the unusual sent her coursing through independent cinema, particularly the surreal, character-driven worlds of Federico Fellini, which mirrored the Indian and French short films she was also watching at the time.