Nepali Hampshire-based photographer, Susmita Rai, studied Fine Art Photography at Camberwell College Of Arts, 2021. Her work is deeply rooted in the themes of belonging, in-betweenness, and community. As a diaspora, she understands the complexities of navigating multiple identities and cultures. Her work reflects this understanding and seeks to explore the nuances of what it means to belong to a community while also existing in a state of in-betweenness.

She sees her work as a means of giving back to her community and uplifting those around her.

Through her work, she seeks to create a dialogue between herself and her Nepali tradition. Using photography as a way of exploring and celebrating the amalgamation of British and Nepali cultures that coexist within her.

‘Angalo’ (अंगालो) 2021 translating to 'embracing' in Nepali is an on-going series where she photographed females of the Nepali diaspora in the U.K. These series of work are dedicated to every other Nepali woman who encounters her pictures, in hopes that they find a third space, as it did for her when creating this work. A third space to celebrate the differences and similarities and the 'new ways of being' rather than a fixed notion of identity. As part of the Nepali diaspora we are always evolving and growing, the process of becoming and the effort to settle in the new land is a continuous process. We do not associate with just one culture and one unique culture is not more correct or authentic than a sum of them. The fine line of adaption, does it exist?

This work is a dialogue in between her and her traditions. It's her way of trying to find amalgamation. Through ‘Angalo’ (अंगालो) she makes a statement: we are here! It is not only about the exaltation of the both cultures, British and Nepali, that co-exist in her, but also a call for women to empower each other. 

From Me To You , 2022, I went to Nepal after 8 years, the second time since I moved to the UK in 2010. I wanted to represent Nepal from my lens and not the western gaze, challenging the Eurocentric perspective. I had the privilege of finishing my BA in 2021 and I wanted to use that privilege. Creating our narrative this time and dismantling the dominant stereotypical representation and portrayal of Nepal. Nepal is as ethnically diverse as its terrain and I wanted to show that. 

I realised my gaze turned more into nostalgia. I wanted to emphasise the colour of the sky, the humidity, the warmth of the sun, the dusty city, the greenery of the trees and the shivers from touching the cold rivers of the villages. It's the thing that carried me that day and I carry it in my memory today. Of how it is and has been. Home for me has changed over the years, the Nepal I grew up in is different to Nepal now. However, the thing that hasn't changed are the ambience, the people, the sun in a winter morning, the breezes in the heat, and the food. Memory lies, but the memory I carry in my heart of Nepal is true. Home after all is a place that exists in my imagination. That is what home was and is and became.

But what is my gaze anyways? In neither of them do I belong. When I reflect at this project, I ask myself..do I have the right to tell a story on their behalf? Will I ever feel like I belong somewhere?

I named this project “From Me To You” , this is what I can and want to offer you. Everything, all of my experiences, my questions, my doubts, my privileges. It's all been accumulated here and this is the result. 

Where we love from, 2026, is about a love story of the present, rooted in reflection of our roots, where we come from and what we carry with us when we leave. It is an exploration of preserving culture through memory and of how memory can become a way of carrying something forward into the future.

Throughout the making of this project, I found myself returning to a question: where is the essence of now?

What is the future I am trying to portray? Where is the “now” within these images? Where is the new land?

Perhaps the answer lies with the people who view the work. They become the “new land” bringing their own experiences, memories and interpretations to the images. What do they feel when they encounter the work? What do they recognise, remember, or want to take away from it? Maybe the new/future is something that begins through the act of looking and thinking.

This work invites the viewer to consider their own sense of home: where they are now, where they have come from, and what they themselves might want to preserve for the future. In this sense, perhaps the act of reflection is where the new land exists.

Sunil Gupta writes, “My journey about migration wasn’t really about leaving something behind, it was about finding something on the other end.” This made me question my own experience of migration. My journey of migration had always been about what I left behind. I rarely thought about what I might find on the other side. 

There’s something almost impossible about imagining that I could build a life in the UK. My understanding of migration had always been centred on departure and loss, rather than arrival and possibility. This project has allowed me to begin thinking about migration in the opposite direction, not only as a story of what has been left behind, but as an ongoing process of finding, creating and becoming. 

This project is a celebration of love, an ode to Nepal, a home remembered more than lived. It explores a diasporic love that grows from the past, sustained through memory, and the desire to carry the culture forward. The work ultimately asks what we carry with us when we migrate, what we leave behind, and what we are able to create on the other side.