Spectres of Violence

IN THE OPENING sequence to his photo book 1528, Rohit Saha is quick to set the tone for the narrative that follows. It opens with a grainy black-and-white image of a man’s face, framed such that it cuts right under his eyes, his unflinching gaze directed at the viewer. This injects the work with a confrontational tone that resurfaces time and again over the course of the book.

The photograph on the following page shows a piece of cloth strewn on the ground, a chair in the middle of the frame and a single window on the far right. Two bars on the window ominously block the view to the outside. The scene is reminiscent of depictions—in cinema and other forms of visual culture—of interrogations in prison cells. Despite the absence of people in the photograph, it conjures up images of hostile questioning by authorities. Often in these scenes, such interrogations are followed by torture, possibly