Emerging talent: Young photographers mimic everyday life through their lens

KARACHI: Three photographers displayed their myriad of imagination in an exhibition, ‘Imitation of Life’, at Fomma Art Centre on Tuesday.

“This [photography] was something I really wanted to do as I was always intrigued by it as a kid. I even took it up as a minor subject at university,” shared Nazia Akram who earned her bachelors in Fine Arts from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVS) after which she went to Central Saint Martins in London for a degree in photography and video making. She believes she has inherited artistic genes from her mother’s side of the family.

“I was inclined towards chasing shadows and the concept of a dark room,” said Akram, adding that she focused more on capturing images that seemed dream-like.

Funland series by Jaffer Hasan

Akram, a traveller, has captured landscapes and varied images from Switzerland, Morocco, Austria and Italy to Turkey, Russia and France. Her photography showcased landscapes, train stations, rail lines and a woman standing in her balcony.

Meanwhile, Jaffer Hasan, who is best known to the city as a fashion photographer, instead decided to capture and shed light on his nostalgic past spent in Funland at the exhibition.

“It’s an old place to go to and the nostalgia associated with it when you’re capturing it through the lens is very strong,” said Hasan, adding that he has been capturing people swinging on rides since the past three years.

Hasan’s upcoming series will be focused on the elephants at the Karachi Zoo.

Lastly, making a debut with his first solo show, Syed Haseeb Amjad has captured Hunza during three seasons: spring, late autumn and summer.  From a flower blooming on an arid land to sheep looking straight in the camera, Amjad’s photographs range between landscapes and portraits.

Clothes line by Nazia Akram

“Within two years and three visits to the scenic valley, I captured the same landscape during different seasons so it had a very different view each time,” said Amjad, adding that it looked as if there had been a transformation, but really it was the same landscape.

Despite having studied architecture at IVS, Amjad has been involved in professional photography since the last six years. “Architecture and photography are two different fields, but one led to the other,” he explained, adding that as a student of architecture, he used to take architectural photographs and so, the passion to click grew him from there.

The exhibition continues till October 10.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2016.