Even in ugliness, there is beauty: Mumtaz

Mumtaz is a photographer whose work falls in category of rare breed of snap shooters.

KARACHI: There are the photographs that adorn walls and there are photographs that talk. Ali Reza Mumtaz is a photographer whose work falls in the latter category of that rare breed of snap shooters whose pictures communicate and connect with the viewer.

On the surface of it, he shoots the mundane; the everyday ambiguities that surround us and so do not merit attention. On closer inspection, these ordinary images stir the onlooker because of the underlying message and because of their depth and poignancy.

The straight forward artless picture of a board of switches “all turned on in a city that is forever without electricity”, or the girl sitting outside a classroom caught in the web of her dupatta trying to extricate herself out of it have been captured beautifully by Mumtaz. Countless other portraits hang at Rez’s exhibition at T2F that exude the binaries in this raw, vibrant and unforgiving city.

“There is no place in the world that has as much to photograph as Karachi,” claims Mumtaz who has travelled the world taking pictures of people and places that have caught his eye.  But Mumtaz says he finds beauty everywhere, even in Gulfway Shopping Centre where a bangles store will have “a billion colours on display”. The globe trotter has been to many picturesque locations yet none rouse in him as much passion as Karachi where, “Everything has a layer of dirt on it. It’s not fun to have everything clean and beautiful. There is a beauty in ugliness,” he philosophises. “I’m dying to capture Karachi in the rain. How rain destroys this city and completely incapacitates it.”

Though, little is known about the man himself, he came to be known as a professional photographer in Karachi, when his inner eye imprisoned the images of small children in Makli Relief Camp during the floods of 2010 that hit Pakistan. “I captured (the images) of children there. Despite all the crap going on with their lives, the children went on with their lives and were busy playing. People liked those shots, with kids symbolising hope. (For instance) if they were in school and rain poured in, they had to do with make-do rain coats. But they were all smiles. It was great to learn from them,” said Mumtaz.

36 years old Ali Reza Mumtaz has been capturing timeless moments since he was six years old. It has been 30 odd years of continuing to feed his passion of captivating “anything that is visual”. “I have been doing it as a hobby for a long time and (with) time got better with it. (However) after 30 years of shooting, (I believe) a six year old is infinitely more creative than an adult. It’s crazy. In learning, we unlearn a lot of things” told Mumtaz.

His first solo exhibition titled “Be there in Two Minutes” opened January 14 and is a tribute to the city by the sea where he was born and brought up.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th,  2011.