A Heavy Blanket, a Smeared Pool (slideshow)

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This work engages with the colonial photo archive of India through re-configuring a contemporary encounter with it. The selected images are sourced from five different 19th century British photo albums owned by the Getty Research Institute, ranging from amateur family travel albums to administrative city guide books. In its industrial fabrication, the relationship between the book and its handler is reversed – unlike the carefully preserved artifact that the mere oil of a hand may damage, the steel book holds the potential to harm the hand turning its jagged pages. The desirability of both the album and the photos within is discarded in this form; attractive, gilded covers and ornate lettering are replaced by rusted steel and crude welding. Redacted from all images are the monuments that served as the photographer’s focus and what remain are the bodies of water and an overexposed sky. The former reflects a blurred image of the monument while the latter evades the camera’s technology and escapes capture, and in this manner, both function as pathetic mirrors to the historical moment.

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