PHOTOGRAPHING ABSENCE

“It was an intense experience. We were there for six months everyday, except on Sundays and during the university holidays. So, our relationship with the space developed over time,” Madhuban tells me on the telephone, as she talks about the exhibition Through a Lens, Darkly, being displayed at PHOTOINK since December. Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya had been invited by the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, to the (earlier) National Instruments Ltd. in June 2010. The National Instruments Ltd. was the first and only still camera factory. The 1980s saw the company dissolving its workforce as it was declared a sick industry. Eventually, it handed itself over to the Jadavpur University in January 2009. The place now lies in ruins waiting to be converted into the new university campus. By the end of November, their visit was to result in a collection of photographs.

As they entered the premises of the factory, they were immediately struck by startling and moving images of what had been: A huge cardboard replica of a camera at the foyer of the building; in the ‘machine room’, they found a shirt hanging in the middle of the space as if someone had left it there but never quite came back for it. Madhuban adds, “People knew that they were leaving but had left their things behind; everywhere there were traces and marks of things left behind.”

What the photographs depict, capturing inanimate objects, is an absence that is eerie and suggestive of the presence of workers in those spaces in the past. Of the series, ‘The Archaeology of Silence’, the duo set out to look at the history of labour, “that comes into view”, Madhuban explains, “through these inanimate objects which lets us imagine the people rather than their presence. The photographs become insights into the people through the traces they’ve left behind. In most industrial spaces, the workers are very anonymous.”

The duo decided to do the project with a digital camera and this is interesting as they look at a certain history of photographs through photographs. Madhuban adds, “It becomes ironic because we are looking at the analogue through a digital camera which, in a way, suggests that the digital camera has taken over the analogue camera. And this is poignant.”

Apart from the photographs, the exhibition also comprises several photo-animations, which the photographers felt would help in showing and explaining better the abandoned plight of the factory. “We didn’t go in thinking that we would be doing the animations,” Madhuban says, “Although it’s a dead space, in terms of the absence of people and production, there were slight movements and changes caused by the wind and the light.” The animations explore the liminal space between the still and the moving image.

In a way, the exhibition is a documentary of a certain history of Indian photography in India. “But it goes beyond that”, Madhuban insists, “If it had just been a documentary we wouldn’t have done the photo animations. It is also about entering into that space and time. Along with the documentation, there is also an interpretation of what one sees.” Madhuban and Manas have tried to depict the factory and its ruins in an objective manner. “Most of the colours you see in the photographs are the way we found it. We didn’t make use of any artificial light. We didn’t move things around; the organisation of objects was already so dramatic, so solemn.”

The title has been derived from the biblical phrase, ‘Through a glass, darkly’, which refers to the vague human understanding of god which is clear only after death. Although, the exhibition does not make any religious references, the title serves the purpose. As Madhuban says, “Through a camera, we are looking at the ruins of a camera factory.”

(Through a Lens, Darkly, was on view at PHOTOINK, till February 12.)