This Golden Mile – Kavi Pujara

Kavi Pujara began to photograph the neighborhood around Leicester’s Golden Mile as a way to reconnect with the city, its residents, and his own past after 30 years of living in London. The resulting images form This Golden Mile, exhibited at Martin Parr Foundation in October 2022, to coincide with the publication of a book of the project by Setanta Books.

“This Golden Mile is not about the one-mile stretch of Melton Road that turns into Belgrave Road, with its sari shops, Indian restaurants, and jewelers. It’s about the arteries and veins that come from it, giving life to the parts of the neighborhood away from the central commercial thoroughfare. This Golden Mile exists in the poetry of homes, temples, and street corners; it’s down the alleys and through the gaps in steel fencing leading to crumbling industrial plots. This Golden Mile is both an entry point and an ending, the last mile of a long journey to Britain.”

~ Kavi Pujara

Pujara was born in Leicester, in the early 1970s, just ten minutes from the Golden Mile and would visit most weekends to see his grandmother. It was a time when overt acts of racism — being spat at, chased by the National Front, and calls of wog or paki, and “Go back home!” — were common. As soon as he turned 18, Pujara moved to London and never looked back. When he did return, nearly 30 years later with his young family, making pictures allowed him to rediscover the community he grew up in but no longer knew. A few weeks after returning to Leicester, in 2016, the UK voted to ‘leave’ in the EU referendum. The blame was later placed on Europeans, immigrants, and asylum seekers by Home Secretary Priti Patel, who in a speech on immigration in 2021 said, “People across the country do not want their communities and way of life to change beyond recognition.” In 2020, the Conservative government introduced The Nationality and Borders Bill, reforming immigration laws that included many controversial policies and has been criticized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It is against this backdrop that Pujara made these photographs.

“For over fifty years, families around This Golden Mile have had a shared experience of migrating to Leicester and have re-articulated their South Asian identity to exist within an English context. These experiences bond this community, and they bond them to me. I made this book to give voice to that bond, and I also hope it will contribute to the conversation around immigration to Britain. We have a multicultural society because Britain is the product of a multicultural empire. Communities like this are not an erosion of British values or its culture, but a vital artery in our intertwined and tangled colonial histories.”

~ Kavi Pujara

“What a pleasure to see the work of Kavi Pujara growing and flourishing into a book and exhibition. He first came to our attention through the Martin Parr Foundation bursary scheme, and this has proven a very good way of finding emerging talent. We love to give photographers their first shows, and this is a prime example.”

~ Martin Parr

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

Photograph © Kavi Pujara

This Golden Mile is published by Setanta Books, Oct.2022. The photo exhibition was held 06.Oct – 18.Dec.2022, at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, England.

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