Dayanita Singh: Sea of Files - by Stefan Jensen & Louise Wolthers (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

The black-and-white photographs show shelves stacked with cloth-wrapped bundles of documents, all emblematic of a desire to organize the past and keep it accessible.--William Meyers "Wall Street Journal"

The camera feasts on an endless tension between organization and disarray: --Mark Feeney "Boston Globe"

Singh has paved new ways for engaging with photography, be it through humanist portraiture, or her innovative display structures and book objects which recast traditional notions of the museum and publishing.-- "L'Oeil de la Photographie"