Façade van een huis met een man in een raamkozijn in Lahore before 1885

This photographic print shows a house facade with a man in a window frame in Lahore. As a photograph, the work is of course made through a chemical process involving light-sensitive materials. But it depicts something else: a building made of brick and intricately carved wood. Consider the labor involved. First, the making of the bricks themselves, extracted from the earth and fired. Then, the hands that laid those bricks to create the structure. Finally, the highly skilled carving of the wood, formed into complex geometrical patterns, and assembled into the window frame. The photograph flattens all of that labor into a single image, just as global capitalism turns work into an abstract value. But by looking closely, we can remind ourselves of the many processes and hands that contributed to the making of this place. It is not simply an image, but a record of human effort, ingenuity, and tradition.