Exile is the third chapter of Vasantha Yogananthan’s seven-part project A Myth of Two Souls, a contemporary photographic retelling of the Ramayana, the Sanskrit epic first recorded by the poet Valmiki around 300 BC and one of the founding epics of Hindu mythology. Since 2013, Yogananthan has been travelling from north to south India, retracing the itinerary of the epic’s heroes.

This volume takes up the story where the second chapter leaves off: Rama is banished from the kingdom and forced to live in exile for fourteen years. The third chapter tells of Rama’s life in the forest, where he is joined by Sita and his brother Lakshmana. Indian writer Arshia Sattar retells the Ramayana for the book, so the sequence carries both a photographer’s eye and a writer’s narration.

Between fiction and reality, Yogananthan deliberately blurs the lines through multiple aesthetic approaches: colour, hand-painted and illustrated photographs are interspersed with vernacular images to compose the layers of this timeless story. The Ramayana has been continuously rewritten and reinterpreted through time.

Yogananthan, born in Grenoble in 1985 and based in Marseille, is a self-taught photographer deeply attached to silver photography. The book is a central object in his practice, which led him to co-found the publishing house Chose Commune. A Myth of Two Souls was published in seven photobooks between 2016 and 2020, one per chapter of the epic.

The first edition of Exile appeared in 2017: 192 pages in a section-sewn OTA-bound softcover, 24.5 by 30 centimetres, with graphic design by Kummer & Herrman. Fifty-one photographs are reproduced. Published in French and English.