What fascinated me most about Singh’s work were the photographs collected in the File Room and Museum of Chance books. In them, we find black and white images from the huge state archives, warehouses and registry offices of India. As we flip through these books, we are filled with an idea of poetic misery and a sense of depth: once upon a time, people suffered and toiled. submitted countless requests. sent reports and filed lawsuits. They wrote and classified each other’s activities. and, with the encouragement and command of the state, they kept an unbroken record of all this. Eventually, all this intense activity came to an end and what was left behind were these documents, these files, these bags and the metal shelves and the cupboards that fit and hold them all. Singh black-and-white images of those stacks of lead gray envelopes, metal, old, faded paper – all of which seem to be covered in dust even when they were not – make me realize what I would call “the texture of memory.” . Paradise for dust mites… one of the shots that reminded Pamuk of his children’s brushes with the Turkish authorities. Photo: Dayanita Singh Either we preserve old objects, stones and dishes, or we order colored paintings to hang somewhere believing that they are permanent, or we collect with difficulty every piece of paper on which we have ever written anything (I am one of these people) or naively trust the endless ability of photography and digital storage, preserving the past is, in fact, an impossible endeavor. Memory never leaves us much to hold. But it may not be the details in the memories that attract us, but their aura – of being bottled in some way into objects that fill our present. Inevitably, the aura will cause a kind of melancholy in us, like when we look at ancient Greek and Roman ruins and abandoned monuments. The reason we find these dirty, dusty, colorless files so “beautiful” is that, thanks to Singh’s skillful camera, they reveal the accumulated melancholy within us. When this mood is reflected in the same context as the faces and shadows of some of the employees who worked in these old warehouses, cellars and archives, we begin to feel that the feeling of melancholy that these archives cause within us is, in fact, narrow. associated with a particular lifestyle. In addition to this particular feeling I was trying to identify, Singh’s photographs also convey a sense of humility towards life, retreat, dignified resistance even when the passage of time makes everything meaningless. Poetic and skilful… Dayanita Singh. Photo: Dpa Picture Alliance / Alamy Take a picture of the employee surrounded by files and folders from the File Room. The woman – who spends her life among piles of yellowed documents, bundles of envelopes tied together with string and shelves full of papers – wears an optimistic smile that gives the feeling that there is something logical and necessary in her Kafkaesque efforts. But along with this poetic and allegorical sensitivity, I also see a realistic element in Singh’s photographs. Those, like me, who are enchanted by her images will discover that they can smell the special aroma of those tall piles of ancient, yellowed papers stacked in file rooms and inside and above metal filing cabinets. In his essay on the old, decaying records and Singh’s photograph, author Aveek Sen reminds us that the main source of this unique odor permeating India’s state archives is the rice paste used in paper production. Invisible creatures known as house dust mites like to devour this rice paste, leaving holes in their passage and eventually filling the file rooms with dust clouds of tiny paper particles. The cool breeze of a ceiling fan (this basic government office emblem we can usually find somewhere near Singh’s photos with file rooms) or even a person’s cough (because it is impossible not to cough at a file) is enough to dismantle what is left of these old papers, which have long since become dust from the wear and tear of these mites and time. An optimistic smile… an employee surrounded by files and folders. Photo: Dayanita Singh Indian records – places that can turn even the healthiest person into asthmatic – also acquire their characteristic scent from the monsoon floods. Wet envelopes, when left to their own devices, will begin to spread a strange mushroom smell and dampness. If the files are removed one by one (an almost impossible task) and dried in the sun, an odor that could be described as river mud and fish mud will soon take place. I am attracted to these details because of the similar scents I would smell as a child. I saw the same lockers, huge files, and mountains of records in the Turkish government offices that my mother and brother and I used to visit in the 1960s whenever we had to collect vaccine records or property titles or register a birth. Even as a child, I could feel that the spell of this huge and monstrous entity we called the “state” had a much deeper attraction in these places than at school, military ceremonies, or Republic Day celebrations. What the state did primarily was not its soldiers and police, but these files, archives, documents and papers. Sometimes our lives fail to align with what we were told we should with all the papers that formed on these aging buildings when there was a mistake or a gap in my vaccine records or, as would later happen, in my conscription file. . This would push the police or the army to come and punish me. In other words, the real source of state power was not soldiers and police, but these official records that had been accumulated for hundreds of years. The Real India… from the Little Ladies Museum, a series of portraits taken by Singh in the family’s homes. Photo: Dayanita Singh The stern, imposing tone that most of the employees in these government offices took with us – as well as the fact that nothing was going smoothly (it always seemed that something was wrong or something was missing) – all reinforced our perception that the state was strong. and we were weak. Although these files, these masses of documents, were meant to be pulverized in 60 or 70 years, they were even stronger than us. Maybe that’s why Singh’s photos seemed like memories to me. The aura contained in what Singh calls archiving permeates her other shots. We see this most clearly in the Bhavan Museum, a series of small pamphlets arranged in a box. Like me, Singh likes things that are framed, objects that are seen through glass. When I flip through the 26 museum images, showcases, showcases, and framed items gathered in one of the pamphlets, The Museum of Vitrines, it becomes clear that there is something like a museum in Singh’s world. This soft light coming from the registers and archives, as well as a special style and way of framing, are also consistent with the Museum of Little Ladies, a series of portraits taken by Singh in the homes of Indian families. Orhan Pamuk. Photo: Ozan Köse / AFP / Getty Images As if the way to fully absorb the infinite crowds of India, the endless traffic jams and turmoil, the strong sun and its characteristic history, is to retreat to places whose atmosphere is exactly the opposite, in places protected by frosted glass. tulles and curtains, from closed or half-open windows, at night, fog and shadows. In these places – as in the old archives that incorporate the history and politics of a nation and the texture of its memory – we may not be able to see the real cacophony of the outside world, its chaos and controversy. But what we find, bathed in strange light, are people and objects that detach themselves from this world while reminding us of it. The objects depicted in these images seem to exude a kind of silence. But, in the end, what reminds us of the whole of India, as well as the whole past and the halo and the aura of archives, is this special light that Singh’s camera skillfully captures. It’s the perfect signature of this great photographer.
