Roland Barthes in his seminal book 'La Chambre Claire' finds the essence of photography in its puncture of time. The past comes alive and confronts us like a sensuous being. The photograph serves as an index of intractable reality, an authenticating evidence of time, a testimony of truth. But whose sense of time and truth does a photograph index? In my project, ‘Queer Childhoods’, conversations with queer individuals about their childhood photographs makes clear that imbricated in the ‘record’ of photographs are embedded silences and ghostly spectres of uncaptured subjectivities. Imaginaries that you cannot see but can only listen to.

In the frontispiece of Barthes’ book is a photograph by Daniel Boudinet, simply titled 'Polaroïd, 1979'. In the image, through the diaphaneity of the curtain, appears the soft edges of a bed and a cushion in a barely visible room. In this work, I draw these curtains as the symbolic surface for the photograph. Behind the facade of Boudinet’s curtain lies domesticity with its soft-edged clarity mired in darkness. How do we enter this domestic space of photography? Does the image lie beyond the photograph and can a voice enter an image? Is it possible to listen to a photograph?

Mayank Agarwal, I am an artist-researcher whose interest lies in the domain of photography, video and image-making practices. My explorations into media practice emanates from a critical scholarly lens but also aligns and attunes itself with experiences of marginalisation. In both my research methodology and media practice, I have been developing a participatory approach that prioritises an ethics of listening in studying visuality. For the past year, I have been a fellow at Sarai-CSDS, Delhi; part of a months-long artist workshop with Studio CAMP and a grantee for the 2024 Gender-Bender Festival, a joint project between Sandbox Collective and Goethe-Institut, Bangalore.