“If you cannot bear these stories then the society is unbearable. Who am I to remove the clothes of this society, which itself is naked. I don’t even try to cover it, because it is not my job, that’s the job of dressmakers.” ― Saadat Hasan Manto during his trial on obscenity charges.
This bittersweet series is an utterly subjective journey through Pakistan, a country that remains a riddle despite several extended stays since 2010 and the mix of exasperation and tenderness I feel for it.
The construction of these diptychs occurred slowly over the years, as I began to distinguish the layers of reality, walk my way through the veneer of things, identify the stories and plots, the characters and the overtones and to fuse them with the shadows of my own inner theater. Images started to merge and make sense; a new sense born out of apparent clashes or unexpected semblances.
"Aarzoo" is an Urdu word meaning wish, longing, and lust. This is what this series is about and its perversion.
The lost smile of a politician rotting on a wall in Lahore reappears in Peshawar amid the remains of a butcher shop, the plastic peeling faces of two princely dressed infants face the promises of “paradise”, in theaters shadows answer each other while outside the society is burning, a peremptory finger on a wall of a military family hall in Quetta undermines the dreams of fame of a hijra who languidly poses in front of the gate of a film studio in Lahore in the hope of being cast.
These deconstructed and reconstructed images weave new scenes. They suggest stories; they constitute a track game through an often rough but poetic reality. They address the collective narrative through a gaze that covers some tracks and hints at others.
Time somehow stands still, space is saturated with memories and untold tales, walls stare, and people walk by. These pictures have been taken between January 2010 and December 2023.