Where does a state\u2019s power truly reside? Not in its military, says the celebrated writer, but in the Kafkaesque files it keeps on its citizens \u2013 and no one showed this more brilliantly than Singh<\/p>\n
I first met Dayanita Singh in India in 2011. Her house was an hour\u2019s drive from a place I used to rent in Goa every January and February to write. As we stood in her half-lit studio looking at black and white photographs of what she called \u201carchive work\u201d, we could hear the hum of the small gathering Singh had organised: a dinner party that had spilled out on to the terrace and included the writers Kiran Desai<\/a> and Amitav Ghosh<\/a>. Earlier, the conversation had touched upon a crocodile that had been seen roaming around a swamp near the house. Outside, the night was dark and navy blue. Inside, as I studied those photographs in the gloom, some very old and very familiar memories began to surface in my mind. But no, the word \u201cmemories\u201d does not suffice. What was coming to life inside me was an emotion stirred by those memories \u2013 and it seemed as if those photographs had been taken precisely to capture it.<\/p>\n What has most drawn me to Singh\u2019s work<\/a> are the photographs collected in her books File Room <\/em>and Museum of Chance<\/a>. In these, we find black and white images of India\u2019s vast state archives, storerooms and registry offices. As we leaf through these books, we become filled with an idea of poetic decrepitude and a sense of profundity: once upon a time, people slogged and toiled; they submitted countless requests; they sent petitions and filed lawsuits; they wrote about and classified each other\u2019s activities; and, at the state\u2019s encouragement and behest, they kept an uninterrupted record of it all.<\/p>\n