The Earth's atmosphere is a potent vantage point from which to look at regionality, territoriality, spatiality, nationality and identity in Southasia. Commercial jets fly through this expanse, with peripatetic humans in a temporarily suspended nation-condition.
Imagine that you look out from a flight, trying to locate your position, and you begin to take some photos through the window frame – a viewfinder in its own right to the space outside. Inside – despite holding close the physical, documentary evidence of their identity and having had their bodies closely scanned and scrutinised before boarding – passengers and crew alike exist in a temporary state of voluntary exile, suspended above and between nations. The expansion of the air-traveling middle classes in Southasia in the last few decades – which has also been a key driver of the democratisation of photography in the region – has subjected us more frequently than ever before to this "airplane condition".
The essays and interviews in Unframed: Discovering Image Practices in South Asia, edited by the curator and publisher Rahaab Allana, present some of the complex dimensions of lens-based practices in the region. The volume discusses profound overlaps and fusions within our shared subcontinental geography and history, often against the backdrop of the regressive border politics of nation-states. By examining the shifting dimensions of visual cultures and deploying discursive modes of thinking, the book's 31 texts, curated in five distinct sections, serve to dislocate and unframe monolithic histories of photography, and to place them in the meta-contexts of the region.
Various texts navigate larger narratives, counter-narratives, overlaps, departures, interdependencies and entanglements through image-based practices in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar. The reader moves through the content not seamlessly, but with slight adjustments each time, repositioning and reconfiguring the manner one confronts the divided reality of the post-colonial Subcontinent. In these alignments and realignments while navigating the book's various texts and contexts, one often escapes into the "airplane condition", achieving a much broader view of the Subcontinent's terrain and visual practices.