Rohan Shivkumar reviews Nishtha Jain’s documentary about the neighbourhood photo studio, “City of Photos”.

the sense of longing when looking at old photographs is inescapable. there is a yearning to complete in the throes of rose tinted nostalgia what exists only in our imagination and was never really real. sometimes it can get a little icky, this sweetness. but then there is the love of the heterotopia of the photo studio taking us to places we have not been. here desire is uncontrolled and unfurled behind smiling faces through the taj mahal and the garden- the construction of new identity and the resolution of difficult desires through the evidence of the photograph. this exists. or rather also –this existed.