We are Together Culture: Meet Rajen
Member since September 2023
Together Culture is growing a community of outrageously curious, open-minded and creative members who care for each other and want to build a more inclusive and ecological Cambridge. Today, we’re introducing you to Rajen, a photographer. You can find out more about his work here.
Why did you become a member?
I’ve been in Cambridge a long time, and there’s been a lot of events around creativity, but I’ve never really seen a creative hub of any kind. Because there’s CamCreatives, and I’ve been to quite a few events here and there, but I think when Together Culture came up it was a chance to be around other creatives.
I used to be in an agency, so for twenty years I was working with creatives and had creatives all around me. And I sort of miss that. I thought Together Culture could be a good place to come and hang out, meet new people. So that was number one, having that creative space and creative community.
And I'm in a different phase in my career as well, I’m evolving and moving inward. My creative practice has always been working to a brief. That's my creativity. Give me a brief, and I'll do it. That’s what I've done for 20 years. Photography has always been a thing for me, so I think having this little space to do photography, it's been stretching my mind amazingly. So bringing the stuff in, playing around, interacting with others, all of that's been really nice.
Tell us about what you do.
I help people with their personal brand and online branding background. That means helping people with their image, their presence, their expression, verbally, visually, online, offline, all that sort of stuff. Then it’s portraiture - using the camera to capture their personal brand. When I’m taking portraits, I’m thinking, how do I capture people's essence?
On a Founder photoshoot in Cambridge
Tell us a bit about what you're working on at Together Culture.
I’m exploring new ways of working, because my previous experience has been offices, commercial, where everything is quite slick. What I’m working on now is more about the process. You know, what am I going through? What am I thinking about? How can I express myself? And I've never been massively amazing at that - typical bloke, right!
So I’ve been working with other members of the Creative Workspace, and that has been really cool. One sat in my space and it was a storytelling experience. She seemed quite comfortable, just telling me about herself and her history. And I was just handing her things to hold, which she would put on her head, or hold to her chest. That was just a half hour session, but the idea was to capture her over time and continue that process. In contrast to my other work, where someone will have paid for a session, and then that's it.
Whereas this member, at some point, will come in again. So time will have passed. Her inclination or her thoughts on the process may have changed. Our conversation will move on, she'll bring some personal items in, and we can co-create these portraits with her. When I’m working with someone, we’re thinking about what you’re dressed as, how you're carrying yourself today, what your day looks like, what does today mean?
Rajen’s Winter Wonder Photo experience at Together Culture’s Saturday Lounge
I'd like to obviously get more people involved with this, and to do that I now need to figure out how to communicate what I’m doing. I need to figure out, what is my practice? How do I want to get other people involved? What does a creative portrait look like? Why do we want to do it? Why does it help you? Why does it help me?
I'm trying to avoid the word photo shoot. That's not what we're doing. That's the practical name for it. It’s more an experiment or an experience. The process is a co creation.
Community Membership is £18.50 a month; become a member here. And if you’re interested in finding out more about the Together Culture community, join us on 22 June for Saturday Lounge - a free event celebrating our neighbourhood!
