Images you can smell

By: Orhan Pamuk
Translated by: Agron Shala

I first met Dayanita Singh in India in 2011. Her house was an hour's drive from the place I rented to write in Goa every January and February. As we sat in her half-lit studio, looking at black-and-white photographs of what she called "archival work," we could hear the buzz of a small get-together Singh had arranged: a celebratory dinner that spilled out onto the terrace and included writers Kiran Desai and Amitav Ghosh. Earlier the conversation touched on the subject of a crocodile that had been found wandering in the swamp near the house. Outside the night was dark and sea blue. Inside, as I studied those pictures in the dark, some very old and very familiar memories began to appear in my mind. But, no, the word "memories" is not enough. What was coming to life inside of me was the emotion fueled by those memories – and it was as if those pictures were made to capture just that.

What has attracted me most to Singh's work are the photographs collected in her books "File Room" and "Museum of Chance". There we find the black and white images of India's great state archives, repositories and registrars. As we flip through these books, we are filled with the idea of ​​poetic crushing and a sense of insight: once upon a time people were industrious and toiled; they presented countless demands; they sent petitions and filed lawsuits; they wrote about it and classified each other's activities; and, at the instigation and command of the state, kept unbroken records of all these.

Finally, all this hectic activity came to an end and what was left behind were these documents, these files, these bags and the metal shelves and cabinets that hold and store them all. Singh's black-and-white images of those stacks of gray, metal lead covers, old, faded papers—all of which appear to be covered in dust, even when they aren't—make me aware of what I want. I called it "memory texture".

If we save old objects, stones and vessels, or commission colorful paintings to hang somewhere in the belief that they are permanent, if we carefully collect every scrap of paper we've ever written something on (I'm one of those people ) or naively believe in the infinite capacity of photography and digital storage, preserving the past is, indeed, an impossible endeavor. Memory never allows us to retain too many things.

But perhaps it's not the details within memories that draw us in, so much as their aura – of being somehow bottled up, within the objects that populate our present. Inevitably, the aura will cause us a kind of melancholy, just like when we look at ancient Greek and Roman ruins and abandoned monuments. The reason why we find these dirty, dusty and colorless files so "beautiful" is that, thanks to Singh's deft camerawork, they reveal the melancholy accumulated within us.

When this situation is caught in the same frame together with the faces and shadows of some of the employees who worked in these warehouses, cellars and old archives, we begin to feel that the sense of melancholy that these archives evoke in us is, in fact, closely related with a certain way of life. Apart from that particular emotion that I sought to identify, Singh's photographs also convey a sense of humility in the face of life, of a return, of dignified resistance even when the passage of time renders everything meaningless.

Get the image of the clerk surrounded by files and folders from "File Room". The woman - who spends her life among piles of yellowing documents, stacks of files bound with string and shelves overflowing with papers - wears an optimistic smile that gives the sense that there is something as logical as necessary in her endeavours. Kafkaesque.

But alongside this poetic and allegorical sensibility, I also see a realistic element in Singh's photographs. Those, like me, who are mesmerized by her images will find that they can smell the distinct aroma of those tall piles of old, yellowed papers piled up in archive rooms, inside and on top of metal filing cabinets. In his essay on old, decaying archives and Singh's photography, writer Aveek Sen reminds us that the main source of that peculiar smell that permeates India's state archives is the rice paste used to make paper.

The invisible creatures known as house dust spiders love to devour this rice paste, leaving holes behind and eventually filling the archive rooms with clouds of dust made of tiny particles of paper. The refreshing breeze of a ceiling fan (that quintessential emblem of government office that we can sometimes spot somewhere near the top of Singh's pictures of archive rooms) or even the force of a person's cough (because it's impossible not to cough in an archive ) are sufficient to dissolve what is left of these old papers, long since turned to dust by the damage of these spiders as well as time.

Indian archives – places capable of turning even the healthiest man into an asthmatic – also get their characteristic aroma from the floods that follow the monsoons. Files submerged in water, when left to their own devices, will begin to give off a distinct musty, musty odor. If the files are taken out one by one (an almost impossible task) and set out to dry in the sun, an odor that can be described as river scum and fish slime soon materializes.

I am drawn to these details because of the similar smells I smelled as a child. I saw the same cabinets, giant covers, and mountains of files in the Turkish government offices I visited in the 1960s with my mother and brother, whenever we needed to collect vaccination records or property deeds or register a birth. Even when I was a child I could feel that the presence of that great and monstrous entity we called "the state" exerted a much deeper influence in these places than at school, at military ceremonies or during Republic Day celebrations.

What made the state a state in the first place were not its soldiers and policemen, but these files, registers, documents and letters. Sometimes our lives failed to match, we were told, with all the papers being formed in those antiquated buildings, whenever there was a mistake or a gap in my vaccination records or, as would later happen, in my file at the recruiting office. That would prompt the police or the army to come and punish me. In other words, the real source of state power was not soldiers and policemen, but these official records that had accumulated over hundreds of years.

The strict, authoritarian tone that most officials took with them in these government offices—as well as the fact that nothing went right (there always seemed to be a mistake or something was missing)—all increased our perception that the state was powerful and that we were weak. Although these records, these masses of documents were destined to turn to dust within 60 or 70 years, they were still stronger than us. Perhaps this is why Singh's photographs look like memories to me.

The aura contained in what Singh calls archival work seeps into her other photos as well. We see this more clearly in "Bavan Museum", a series of small booklets arranged in a box. Like me, Singh likes things that are framed, objects seen through glass. When I flip through the 26 images of museums, showcases, cabinets, and framed objects collected in one of the brochures, "Showcase Museum", it is clear that there is something museum-like about Singhutt's world. That soft light coming from the registers and archive rooms, as well as a particular style and manner of framing, are also coherent with "Museum of Little Ladies", featuring a series of portraits taken by Singh in the homes of Indian families.

It's almost a way to fully absorb India's never-ending crowds, its endless traffic jams and turmoil, its mighty sun and its peculiar history; it is almost to retreat to places whose atmosphere is quite the opposite, to spaces protected by frosted glass, by tulle and curtains, by closed or half-open windows, at night, by mists and shadows. In these spaces—as in the old archive rooms that embody a nation's history and politics and the fabric of its memory—we may not be able to see the actual cacophony of the world outside, its chaos and strife. But what we find, bathed in a strange light, are people and objects that are detached from that world while reminding us of it.

The objects captured in these images seem to exude a kind of silence. But ultimately what reminds us of all of India, and all of the past and the aura and atmosphere of the archive rooms, is that particular light that Singh's camera deftly captures. It is the unmistakable signature of this great picture. /Telegraph/