When Madhuban Mitra and Manas Bhattacharya first visited the National Instruments Ltd. camera factory in Kolkata in 2009, they found the building, despite having only recently been shuttered, in a romantic state of abandonment. Reconfigured in 1957 as a Nehruvian public-sector enterprise, NIL is famous for having manufactured India’s only 35-mm camera, the National 35. “Through a Lens, Darkly”—a 2010–11 exhibition at Photoink in New Delhi comprising photographs of NIL’s dusty interior and camera parts scattered on factory worktables, and a stop-motion film made by taking a National 35 on