“Paradise absent is different from paradise lost…”

Culcutta Riot 1946, Opacity Photo Collage.

This work, I call it an opacity photo collage is a collection of poor images that I collected from the internet, superimposed one over the other with different opacity thus to create a layered image that has some kind of abstract nature.

By poor image I mean the images which are freely available low-resolution images that are freely available on the internet. Every such images have some kind of political, historical, ideological background. It exists with some loaded information. These images are evidence of some past time.

History is always dynamic it’s never static. There’s always a place for uncertainty in it. It is always past. It can be rewritten, can be erased or we can even make a new one. It always depends on the power plays. Poor images have a potentiality to strengthen any claims. Is there a possibility to have an image which is neutral and whole?

This work was my experiment to bring most of the events happened during the Calcutta riot of 1946 into one single frame. An attempt to freeze the whole in a single frame. So I started collecting the available images and overlapped one over the other with different opacity. the image thus created have an abstract nature. But still, it’s not neutral. It is politically charged, it contain all the information. Some are more visible and some are moved to the deep layers. The image demands some attention to reveal its details. But here the artist is in power, with his decision he is allowing certain events to just vanish and certain events into focus.

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