The Autopsy of the Great Indian Camera #1

…….At the same time I want to believe in things
that are endless, even though we don’t get to see them every day, that are
what color is to a colorless surface, which I believe I have inhabited
once, or once upon a time. My politics shouldn’t matter. It’s my finger
that should—it’s here I’ll take my stand. I want over and over
to tell you what we are is digital, that no other form exists, at least if it does it
is as a function to the other great, existing forms, and they are already published,
it seems, in places.

Flow Chart, John Ashbery

Fluctuations #2, Camera Assembly

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Tray with Empty Shells of the National 35 Camera, Camera Assembly

Aperture Ring for the National 35

Spool and Other Spare Parts for the National 35 Camera

Exposure Meters for the National 35

Hotshoe for Flashgun, National 35

Tray with Shutter Assembly and Other Spare Parts for the National 35

Viewfinder Lenses for the National 35

Lens Assembly, National 35 Camera

Tray with Miscellaneous Spare Parts

Focusing Ring for the National 35

Take Up Spools for the National 35

Tray with Miscellaneous Spare Parts for the National 35

Empty Shell of the National SLR Camera

Advertising Cutout for National Mini Queen 110 Camera, Camera Assembly

Prototypes of the National 35 Camera, Camera Assembly

Promotional Sticker for the National 35, Camera Assembly

Design Chart, National 35 Camera

Design Chart, National 35 Camera

Broken Shell of the National 35 Camera

Shutter Assembly of the National 35

Film Gate, National 35 Camera

Camera Top for the National 35

Spare Parts for the National 35

Spare Parts for the National 35

Aperture Plates for the National 35

Screws on Worktable, Camera Assembly

Screws and Bolts on Worktable, Camera Assembly

Self-Timer for the National 35

Lenses, Film Gate, Exposure Meters and Other Spare Parts

Metal Strip with Aperture Numbers for the Lens, National 35 Camera

Tray with Empty Shells of the National 35 Camera

Repair Section, Camera Assembly

Ants, Winterwise

The onset of winter. Ants carrying the corpse of a spider. Wall outside Machine Shop. Evening falls hard on the city.

This post comprises a series of animation loops, and therefore, will demand some patience on the part of the viewer. Each animation will take around 5-7 minutes to load and play in your browser (for most Indian viewers with a standard broadband connection). This post also marks the end of our shoot. The blog, however, will go on.

 

The Onset of Winter #1

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The Onset of Winter #2

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The Onset of Winter #3

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The Onset of Winter #4

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The Onset of Winter #5

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This series of animations is a tribute to the work of three filmmakers – Abbas Kiarostami, Victor Erice and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Their films dwell on time, on the great cycles of death, life, and the passage of seasons. Also, much of their work is an ode to small things.

Both Abbas Kiarostami and Nuri Bilge Ceylan are also photographers. Their photographs echo their films and initiate an enduring dialogue between cinema and photography, between images and places, times and seasons, and between stasis and motion. But, somewhat strangely, their photographs are not as widely known as their films. Here, we link two different series of Kiarostami’s photographs. The first one, Rain Series, is shot through the windows of a moving car with a digital camera. In the second, Trees in Snow, Kiarostami’s rendition of the winter landscape approaches abstraction.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s photographs of his father hark back to his early films, and are a mediation on ageing, on man’s being in and with nature, and the loss of an order of being in the world. What haunts us about these photographs is that the man becomes a part of the landscape, like a tree.

We also link here a multimedia installation project, Correspondences, collaboratively created by Kiarostami and Erice. Conceived by two Spanish curators, and first shown in the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona in 2007, this installation, which is also a dialogue between the two filmmakers, pulls together images and motifs from their films, and is also a site for them to respond to each other’s work. More importantly, from a formal perspective, a major part of this installation grew out of the video letters that the two directors “wrote” to each other. We link this project here because it is an indication of where cinema, photography and, more generally, the image, are headed. We leave our viewers to make the connections.

The Archaeology of Absence #2

The photograph acts as the projection screen for the person viewing it…A photograph, as such, shows everything. It is only in the viewing that the “invisible” is added to it; the projection screen is great and the apparent proximity to the “reality” of the motif enticing. In the process, the photograph itself is quick to disappear, and the trap of putative knowledge snaps shut.

Jörg Sasse

For a long time, documentary photography has valorised the event and invested its foci around it. The event, according to this worldview, is essentialised as the crucible of all meaning. However, a lot of contemporary work has been turning away from this paradigm. Here, we share the work of three photographers from across the world and from two different generations, all of whom have been consistently working against the dominant, hardened mode of photographic documentation. In their work, they bypass, dismantle and bury the “event” to dig deeper into surfaces, and to employ a ‘looking askance’ in order to locate the “event” (rather, the shadow of the event) within a larger map of meanings.

A student of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jörg Sasse’s early work comprises a series of still lifes focusing on lower middle class apartments, of details of interiors photographed at extremely close range. His photographs of urban marginalia are built upon and play with the notions of the archive and the catalogue. While being staunchly formalist, Sasse’s encyclopaedic catalogues locate the surfaces, textures and architectures within a larger index of the constitution of the private, urban housing and decor. The economy and compositional rigour of his photographs remind us of the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu’s films. We will come back to Sasse’s work in later posts, delving deeper into his visual vocabulary and its implications for contemporary photography.

Closer home, Zubin Pastakia is a young Indian photographer based in Bombay whose work probes spaces, especially urban space, not as a stage for the event to unfold, but as a repository of traces. In his most compelling body of work so far, he looks at the old cinema halls in Bombay. This series is also a meditation on the fading away of the analogue and of certain ways of being and looking. In another shorter series, he maps the city of Bombay through bean bag graffiti “littering” the walls.

Patrick Tsai, another young photographer from Taiwan, is documenting China leading up to the Beijing Olympics. He picks out wayward, everyday things and moments over which the shadow of the Olympics looms large. Tsai’s series has disquieting parallels with the work of sixth generation Chinese filmmakers, especially Jia Zhang-Ke.

We believe our photographs have a certain affinity with the work of these photographers, among others. Documentary photography today, aspires to photograph the non-event. In that spirit, The Archaeology of Absence is meant as a series of portraits. Portraits without faces.

Filmstrip shot with the National 35 camera, found in Machine Shop

Computer Room, Administrative Building

Draughtsman's Room, Design Department

Paperweight, Clerk's Table, Accounts Section

Paperweight and Typewriter, Accounts Section

Paperweight and Razor Blades, Despatch Section

Mona Lisa, Compounder's Table, Dispensary

Newspaper Clippings, Mechanic's Table, Repair Room, Camera Assembly

Contraceptive Pills and Red Chilli Powder, Worker's Locker, Optics Department

Pulp Novel and Letter, Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Wedding Card and Floor Mat, Tool Box, Machine Shop

Shell and Batteries, Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Crucifix, Theodolite Section, Optics Department

Calendar, Machine Shop

Television Set, Recreation Room

Tool Box, Machine Shop

Mercurochrome Bottle and Playing Cards, Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Book and Tools, Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Belt, Worker's Locker, Optics Department

Slippers and Tools, Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Slippers, Machine Shop

'Save National Instruments Committee' Subscription Slips, Tool Box, Machine Shop

Passport Photos, Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Letters, Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Letter found in Worker's Cupboard, Machine Shop

Text of Letter:

Dear,

First, I give to you my heartfelt love. Hope you are keeping well. We are getting by. This is the first time I am writing to you in this way, so can’t figure out what to write. Everything is going topsy-turvy. You slept for days to rid yourself of exhaustion. I have regained my fitness in two days. I don’t know what to write to you. In what language do I express the love I have for you in my small heart? I am scared of having the thief  who has stolen my heart all for myself,  as my very own. You ask me to use the informal “you”, but I find it strange to address you like that. I have used it a couple of times and felt embarrassed. But, with practice, it will be fine. You must answer my letter. And, there is no need to mention in your letter that I have written to you. Write to me now and then, but don’t be too late. I’ll be sad. Write to me once you get my letter, so I’ll know it has reached you. Since this is my first letter, I am not writing at length. I only send my love to you. And, you have left your lighter behind that…