But Where Are You Really From? takes its title from a familiar and often uncomfortable question, one that reveals assumptions about race, belonging and cultural authenticity. Patel’s maternal grandparents come from white working-class communities in Hartlepool, North-East England, while his paternal grandparents are from Karadi, a rural village in Gujarat, India, and migrated to Birmingham during the post-war Commonwealth migrations.

As someone of biracial heritage, Patel’s identity is shaped by the entangled legacies of empire. Hartlepool and Karadi emerge not as opposites, but as interconnected sites; each marked by the visible and intimate traces of his family’s colonial inheritance. His return to these places is not a search for origin, but an exploration of how memory, history and inheritance shape the self. The project becomes both personal and political: a meditation on home, diaspora and the shifting nature of biracial identity.

Through portraiture, landscape and quiet observation, Patel explores how identity is shaped not only by place, but by the people who sustain it. His images connect post-industrial England and agrarian India, focusing on the everyday lives of workers, relatives and residents who shape these spaces through lived experience.

Shot during a period of heightened cultural division, the project engages directly with the socio-political textures of the present. In Britain, this includes the resurgence of far-right violence, seen in the Southport riots; in India, the rise of Hindu nationalism has reshaped national identity and marginalised minority communities. By situating personal narrative within these shifting political landscapes, But Where Are You Really From? examines how the afterlives of empire continue to shape contemporary life. It becomes a reflection on what it means to carry inherited histories in a fractured world; where home is plural, and identity remains in constant negotiation.