Oxfordshire Artweeks photographer shares surreal view of our city

There are blurred colleges and chapels, multiple-exposures of streets which seem to vibrate, and local sights transposed to the wrong locations – including the landlocked Bridge of Sighs spanning a river.

Artist Bharat Patel’s pictures of Oxford are less a realistic representation of Oxford than a state of mind.

Mr Patel and his ceramicist wife Kashmira, who live in the city, are showing their work for Oxfordshire Artweeks – which has seen gallery and studio openings in Oxford this week before shifting to the south of the county after the weekend.Visitors are welcome to view his pictures at St Andrews Church, Headington this weekend.

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Mr Patel says he tries to present Oxford in an alternative way, inspired by the way he imagines it is recalled by the millions of tourists who pass through the city, in fleeting fantastical and dreamlike memories.

“Oxford is famous worldwide,” he says, “and I am lucky to have lived here for many years. I have seen so many tourists taking the standard photographs, yet the city is so much more than those iconic views.

BHARAT PATEL - Oxfordshire Artweeks

“It includes both the historic and the modern and it is full of corners and surprising things that are not often noticed or visited. I wanted to present Oxford from a different viewpoint, whilst still encapsulating the reality of the city.

“I have been intrigued by descriptions of recurring dreams in which people revisited locations, where buildings of stone surrounded by water were interconnected, and in which the dreamer glides effortlessly from one place to another.

“I explore what some of the millions of visitors, or residents, may experience in their dreams; a confusing interplay between time and locations.”

BHARAT PATEL - Oxfordshire Artweeks

Executive director of Oxfordshire Artweeks Esther Lafferty said: “His interest in documenting historical landscapes are breathtaking in stretching one’s imagination as wide as the horizons that his lens could capture.

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With each photograph, he effortlessly draws the onlooker into another world where the action is captured.”

Bharat Patel - Oxfordshire Artweeks

She adds: “What’s unique about this creative couple is that their experience of travelling in far away lands, documenting the customs, traditions, crafts, and cultures of people from different countries, informs their own art – Kashmira, in her ceramic sculptures, and Bharat through his photographs.”