Raw Magnetic Fields
Text & Photographs by Insiya Syed
Lately, the only pickup line that would work on me is: let’s go take photographs! I’d press ‘attending’ at the drop of a hat on the facebook-invite; charge my batteries and start marking ‘X’ on the table-calendar.
And there’s any number of reasons for the excitement: looking forward to anything that involves getting out of routine; the opportunity to document a space; meeting ‘locals’; making conversation; and, of course, building my own personal relationship with the space and those that inhabit it.
Sometimes its simply because of the thrill of marking a ‘pin’ on the map of Pakistan/Karachi: the cost effectiveness of the whole deal, as well as living the experience, after being at-it as a photographer (cant wait when I can call myself a photojournalist – my parents think I am not sober or mature enough to label myself that, yet!) – taking photographs is so charming and
still works on me after all these years. Throw in the fact that what really turns on my camera is when I am prohibited to take a photograph or just simply not allowed to click one.
A photographer’s haven – with subjects that vary from scraps of hazardous material to a 7-year old girl who refused to let me shoot her portrait, and a meager 50km away from Karachi, Gadani was once described as the world’s largest ship-breaking yard. Fast forward the reel to now: it’s nothing less or more than a final resting ground for grandeur, that was – or a backyard with ships thrown around like toys that were once advertised for all things exotic.
Although the remote town has got little to boast now, unceremoniously overlooking an ugly dump of static rusty iron – it still has a beautiful landscape with a resounding OST of the gushing Arabian sea.
Lately, the only pickup line that would work on me is: let’s go take photographs! I’d press ‘attending’ at the drop of a hat on the facebook-invite; charge my batteries and start marking ‘X’ on the table-calendar.
And there’s any number of reasons for the excitement: looking forward to anything that involves getting out of routine; the opportunity to document a space; meeting ‘locals’; making conversation; and, of course, building my own personal relationship with the space and those that inhabit it.
Sometimes its simply because of the thrill of marking a ‘pin’ on the map of Pakistan/Karachi: the cost effectiveness of the whole deal, as well as living the experience, after being at-it as a photographer (cant wait when I can call myself a photojournalist – my parents think I am not sober or mature enough to label myself that, yet!) – taking photographs is so charming and
still works on me after all these years. Throw in the fact that what really turns on my camera is when I am prohibited to take a photograph or just simply not allowed to click one.
A photographer’s haven – with subjects that vary from scraps of hazardous material to a 7-year old girl who refused to let me shoot her portrait, and a meager 50km away from Karachi, Gadani was once described as the world’s largest ship-breaking yard. Fast forward the reel to now: it’s nothing less or more than a final resting ground for grandeur, that was – or a backyard with ships thrown around like toys that were once advertised for all things exotic.
Although the remote town has got little to boast now, unceremoniously overlooking an ugly dump of static rusty iron – it still has a beautiful landscape with a resounding OST of the gushing Arabian sea.
First Published in The Friday Times - March 18-24, 2011 - Vol. XXIII, No. 05
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