On Singh's inventive explorations of archives--with an essay by Nobel
Laureate Orhan Pamuk
This book celebrates Dayanita Singh (born 1961) as the 2022 winner of
the Hasselblad Award, considered the most prestigious international
photography prize. Sea of Files highlights Singh's consistent and
unique engagement with the archive, both literally and metaphorically.
The book includes Singh's associative visual essay Sea of Files in its
entirety, as well as--for the first time in a publication--Museum of
Innocence (The Madras Chapter) and other series engaging with the
meanings and materiality of archives. A personal essay by Orhan Pamuk
explores Singh's photographs of state archives, for him images of aura
and melancholy that evoke the "texture of memory," "an idea of poetic
decrepitude and a sense of profundity." The book furthermore shows how
Singh has paved new ways for engaging with photography, be it through
humanist portraiture or her innovative display structures and book
objects that recast conventions of the museum and publishing.