Anatomy of a Smooth Surface #1 by Rahee Punyashloka

This portrait is based on a staged photograph of an unknown person, who may or may not be Dhobi themself, and which is the first ever photograph of my community. The person smoothens a white cloth laid out on a table with an iron, an occupational task of my people for generations before and after this photo. There is plenty of metaphorical smoothening that occurs within this image too, be it in the matter of the enduring casteist legacy of the image, of the smooth surface to which my people have historically been mere means, or, of the passivity and the unifying limits of the caste structure. What you see in this portrait is my response to this idea of the Dalit body as a smooth, malleable artefact. The pleats and creases and accentuated grains and noisiness that populates my version of this photograph is the first step toward imagining my ancestors differently than as passive facilitators of smoothening.