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A sight so touching in its majesty

By SZ
Fri, 03, 18

COVER STORY

“Dunya baad mein ghoomna, pehle poora Karachi tou dekh lo!”

One of my brother’s very wise quote, often used when I fantasize aloud about travelling the world.

Of late, I’ve been travelling through Saddar a lot. Those who live in Karachi and those who have been enjoying related posts on their Instagram feeds would probably be aware that the area houses some of the oldest buildings in the metropolitan. I knew the area from Google Maps, never having the want or need to experience it. With a new Samsung smartphone in hand, a childlike fascination and a tourist’s determination of documenting each and everything, I, too, have been taking pictures of the local sites. But, of late, I’ve also been wondering how little I know about these heritage structures. So my picture gallery consists just that - pictures, many of which perhaps are not even taken at the ‘correct’ angle; since I’m not so familiar with the history and rich culture, my pictures lack the depth, the factual details, of the context in which they were captured. So, like the ‘educated’ individual I am, I turn to my reliable source on history: the internet.

Google the historic quarters. Google the modern architecture. Google how exactly the city has evolved.

One of the names you are likely to come across is of Marvi Mazhar. An architect and heritage consultant, Marvi promotes art and culture in the city where it’s not easily available, her focus being the historic quarters of Karachi. In conversation with Us, Marvi tells how she connects photography with architecture:

“The social media is a logbook. Whatever I see, whatever I conceive, translates into photographic moments. For an architect, the medium used to be sketching. Now, you are doing so many things that you, unfortunately, don’t get a chance to sit and write or sketch. What you do is, you freeze the moment in the photographs. So there is a very close association in stopping and taking a photograph of what you see; everything I see is part of my architecture.”

And the question I was most worried about? Well, according to her, “You make it more meaningful only when you are out and about. You have to make sure you are part of the context. You can’t just be sitting in your office studio and thinking about architecture. You need to be influenced, to be inspired. You, in your own city, can find so many subjects; it is all a matter of taking out time and going out and documenting.”

In December 2016, Marvi was part of the team that fixed Pakistan Chowk, a public square in the centre of Old Town, Karachi at Kutchery Road. “As an architect, you usually plug in and plug out, and you don’t start living in the space you’ve designed, but here what happened was that the artists started coming and started sketching and painting, and we were like we can design a difference,” she elaborates. As a result, Pakistan Community Chowk Center (PCCC) came into being. “We started interacting and we started documenting. It became a cultural hub with important projects including the Oral History Project and Heritage Walk. The latter is very academic based; we want people to understand what historic quarter is all about. So we take them for a two-hour walk and cover around 14-15 buildings. It’s all about using your five senses; we tell the participants that you’ll be walking with dogs and with rubbish around. Besides teaching internees how to research, how to document and analyse, it opens up people’s minds and starts a dialogue: yeh buildings kitni khoobsurat hain aur yeh kitna ghalat ho raha hai.”

Marvi Mazhar

She stresses going out and learning from one’s context. “Architecture is a social responsibility. In order to be a part of urban socio-political change, you have to design according to your city’s requirements, not what the individual requires.”

There is another group of young people putting their education to good use. Karachi Shutter are all into this type of photography.

“Architectural Photography is the representation of architecture and spaces,” begins Aliasgher Huzaifa. “It is about what is going on, what has been done, and what is going to be in the field of architecture.

Inspired by Iwan Baan, Dutch photographer, known primarily for images that narrate the life and interactions that occur within architecture, and Noorulain Ali and Ali Khurshid, founders of Lighthouse Photography, Neha and Aliasgher want to represent the culture of that time, the changes that were brought in after Partition, and now, the development (modernism and postmodernism) as it happens, the trend of high rise buildings - both residential and commercial.

“Architectural photography shows cultural transformation. Like we have colonial architecture over here. Documenting them and categorising them according to the eras help us realize the different styles that are present in a locality.

“In a way, it is also branding for a particular stakeholder - the architect or the brand owner.”

So, if we are to cut it to basics, how is it different from other forms of photography? “We have to take into consideration multiple factors like weather, overall function of the space, light play, and overall ambience. We do site visits basically where we evaluate all this to show the structure in all its grandeur.”

“This is not easy since every space has its own dynamics,” Neha Siraj elaborates. “The technique varies from project to project, depending on the architect’s point of view and then the client’s opinion on what they want to capture: ‘mujhy ye idhar se dekhna hai.’ At times, there are certain vistas that we have to highlight, internally or externally. So basically, it’s not a single visit; we go there at least 2-3 times, perceiving the structure at different hours of the day. For LUMS, it took us 3-4 months to research and understand its master plan.”

Karachi Shutter may have enjoyed a great start in Karachi, but they don’t plan to restrict themselves to just one city of Pakistan or even the world when there’s so much more to explore and record. “For Rotary Jo Goth (Thatta, Sindh), a housing scheme for 300 flood victims, we spent a whole week living with the locals, noting their lifestyle and their movements in this model village. If, for instance, we had just gone to shoot without prior research and involvement with the community, they probably would not have been so comfortable in front of our camera(s), which would have defeated the purpose. How can we depict the culture or work with an organization if we, ourselves, don’t understand it first?”

Neha Siraj and Aliasgher Huzaifa

“Outside Pakistan, like if you go to Dubai or other Middle Eastern country, it’s a proper field. In Pakistan, however, there are hardly any institutes where architectural photography is taught as a separate subject. Consequently, there is no market for architectural photographers like us. We are working to open our own firm of architectural photography to make it more organized in Pakistan. We plan to spread, though. What’s the use of all this ‘development’, of creating such spaces if we are not going to show it off to the right audiences? Is it just to add to the already long list of things undocumented?”

Good questions. However, it’s not an easy job to introduce a new concept. And Karachi Shutter have had their fair share of challenges. “People still think we are another team in the burgeoning class of wedding or product photographers. We were recently invited to shoot Legends by Inzamam-ul-Haq. We had to reiterate to people that we specialize in space photography,” shares Neha.

“Another concern is security. People around you think you are from some TV channel, and they get so emotional trying to get your attention towards their problems. Once while shooting in Kharadar, an uncle reprimanded us: ‘ye kya aap tasweerein kheench rahay hain. Aap bataein TV pe humaray sangeen maslay hain; pani nahi aata, sarkay kharab hain...’

“There are no ethical issues as such, except when it’s street photography. We try to work on Sundays or in mornings then to avoid traffic. But this is eliminated too when you are working with a client and have things sorted out.”

The little I know about love is that it’s unconditional. Architectural photography, however, has a number of conditions and there is only so much one can do. Maybe I should go back to baby shoots; they aren’t research-oriented subjects and they look just as fabulous.