In today's episode, I'm reading an essay by Eleanor Sanghara Güstard, published in Shade Art Review today.
Eleanor inherited an old Nikon F50 from her late father. When the lens cracked, she kept shooting through it. Those \"poor images\" became a methodology for navigating her position between Britain and India, whiteness and brownness. In her essay, Eleanor traces a lineage of South Asian photographers who use technical strategies, from blur and opacity to degradation, to work against the colonial demand for clarity. From Umrao Singh Sher-Gil's pioneering work from the 1890s through the mid-20th century to Sutapa Biswas and Al-An deSouza's contemporary practice, she shows us how unreadability becomes a site of autonomy.