Photography - INVERSE JOURNAL

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

Dec 16, 2022

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

n Srinagar’s Dalgate, a heritage market known as the Tange-adda, or Tonga Station reminds passers-by of an iconic image of the place that is reminiscent of Kashmir’s 1990’s era. In earlier times—before August 5th 2019 and before the pandemic...

In Memoriam: One Day in the Life of Syed Ali Shah Geelani — A Photo Series by Sagar Kaul

here are a multitude of photographs and videos in the media that capture and portray the political and public figure of Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Each one valuable now more than ever, and each one with a specific purpose or intent. Being...

The Patronising Gaze of the Camera: The Problems with Constructing Visual Identity of Kashmiri Women Around Their Tears — by Sadaf Wani

he keywords ‘Kashmiri women’ fetch two very different and almost contradictory sets of images on the internet as representations of who Kashmiri women are. One set of images focuses on visualising Kashmiri women as these young and fair women, who...

A Buddhist Monastery of Kashmir Buried in the Past — by Manan Shah

uddhism holds a significant place in the greater history of the Kashmir valley. However, its influence often goes unnoticed even while Kashmir happens to have a documented history of over 2000 years that remains unexplored. One place of such...

From the Streets of Kashmir to the Heart of Palestine — A Photograph by Zainab

Photographer's Note t was the last Friday of Ramadan, and I was on my way to catch a bus for Jamia Masjid while walking through the bylanes of Maisum. This man carrying a huge Palestinian flag caught my attention. I assume the Youm-e Quds...

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

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.

L O S T – A Series of Photographs by Adil Manzoor

With a camera in hand, Adil Manzoor returns home to his Kashmir, and in returning, he also returns to a silence that is familiar yet strange. In these photographs, Adil tries to locate that silence in multiple ways, where photography as an “objective” visual medium traces in black and white the subjective and intersubjective matter of thought, distraction, meditation, loss and entrancement. The young photographer finds these situated in a silence that is peculiarly Kashmiri and that is drawn on Kashmiri landscapes and on the Kashmiri faces he captures in black and white.

Modern Family: The Transformation of the Family Photograph in Qajar Iran — by Staci Gem Scheiwiller

Staci Gem Scheiwiller explores the path of transformation that defines the Qajar family photograph, tracings its roots to Qajar painting and to the earliest examples of photography in Qajar Iran (circa 1839). Republished here from the Trans Asia Photography Review (Volume 9, Issue 1), via CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0.

Before the Lockdown — by Swasti Acharya

Swasti Acharya presents a series of photographs that she produced seven years ago, in June of 2013. The series “Before the Lockdown” retrieves, as photographs often do, what is set to be lost or displaced in one way or another (as memory or as something else). In such images, the eternity of a time past reverberates in visuals of everyday life, beyond the limits of enforced change and beyond a controlled liminality that has continuously besieged Kashmir, as if it were some sort of a “liminal space” made such for its own inhabitants (if one is to be reminded of the martial reality that exists beyond such innocent and unassuming visual framing). In more ways than one, Acharya’s visuals of Kashmir elucidate how photography is an art where “capturing” and “retrieving” can be harmonious and not disruptive as far as image-making is concerned, and that too through the unfamiliar lens of an unaccustomed outsider who goes back in time to recover visuals of something that tomorrow might not remain the same or might altogether have been forcefully transformed into something else. This series is published with a note by the young photographer along with relevant captions that go beyond any editorial framing and interpretations presented in this editorial introduction.

Srinagar in Colors and Shades — by Mir Yasir Mukhtar

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.

Yvette Borup Andrews: Photographing Central Asia — by Lydia Pyne

Although often overshadowed by the escapades of her more famous husband (said by some to be the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones), the photographs taken by Yvette Borup Andrews on their first expeditions through Central Asia stand today as a compelling contribution to early visual anthropology. Lydia Pyne looks at the story and impact of this unique body of images.