Mir Yasir Mukhtar, Author at INVERSE JOURNAL

Mir Yasir Mukhtar

Mir Yasir Mukhtar is a freelance photojournalist based in Kashmir. He is developing his craft and skillset while looking to learn and further a career in the photographic industry. Yasir has captured day-to-day events in Kashmir, specializing in people’s movement, human portraits, nature landscapes and documentary features. Yasir has recently been published by Free Press Kashmir, VICE Magazine, Inverse Journal, Kashmir Observer, Mountain Ink Magazine, PARI Education and other publications from Kashmir.

The Season of Transience and Fugitive Emotions: A Tribute to the Kashmiri Autumn — by Mir Yasir Mukhtar

December 16, 2022 | Photography

Mir Yasir Mukhtar presents a tribute to autumn, the season that symbolizes transience and presages the renewal of life. Perhaps inadvertently, the young photographer captures the relationship and connection that the indigenous people of Kashmir have with their sites of heritage, which include famous Mughal gardens such as Nishat Bagh. Widely advertised and promoted to tourists and visitors from outside of Kashmir, this photo story quite contrarily and perhaps unintentionally depicts the ritualized bond that Kashmiris have developed with their sites of heritage, captured in this case through visuals showing the Kashmiri experience of the Nishat Gardens. Following the tradition of celebrating and rendering tribute to the fall season, Mir Yasir Mukhtar produces a concise but vastly creative text supported further by his photography to reflect on autumn in his native Kashmir.

Photo Essay: A 1950s Vintage Landmark Struggling to Stay Afloat in Srinagar’s Dalgate — by Mir Yasir Mukhtar

September 11, 2021 | 2021 Timeline, Photography

Mir Yasir Mukhtar returns with an important photo essay detailing the struggle of a historic barbershop—the New Rose Beauty Salon—to stay afloat in Srinagar’s Tange-adda heritage market located in Dalgate. Established in 1953, the salon is run by two brothers, who inherited it from their father and have since strived to keep it functioning after four decades of operation—having already survived August 5 while barely making it across the still ongoing pandemic.

Inside the Friday Convention: Kashmiri Youngsters as Healers — by Mir Yasir Mukhtar

April 21, 2021 | 2021 Timeline, Photography

Mir Yasir Mukhtar presents a visual story about the age-old practice of leech therapy from his native Srinagar, with photographs taken at the onset of the current pandemic. Hirudinaria manillensis, or the Asian medicinal leech, secretes saliva and enzymes containing a wide variety of proteins that clear toxins from the human body, apart from serving as an anticoagulant, inhibitor, anti-inflammatory anesthetic and vasodilator. Hirudotherapy is more common than not in multiple parts of the world and has been classified as a medical device by the US FDA as of 2004. Mukhtar’s story revolves around an 18-year-old Hirudotherapist named Danish, who if called upon with the virally acclaimed cry, “Danishaa, kalle haa phot!” (translated “Danish, my head is exploding!”), gets to work by carrying out this centuries-old Kashmiri variant of the practice.

Srinagar in Colors and Shades — by Mir Yasir Mukhtar

February 6, 2019 | Photography

In this series of photographs, Mir Yasir Mukhtar diverts his lens to portray everyday life in Kashmir beyond the horrors that are captured by professionals from his field of photojournalism. In habitual scenarios, it is almost impossible to avoid images of war, conflict, tragedy and violence. However, as the images themselves communicate, an alternate Kashmir, and with it an alternate Srinagar, exists to show how Kashmiris try to live on a daily basis while being at the focal point of the oldest unresolved geopolitical conflict of global modernity.