"Sehrabandi" (سہرا بندی) is a poetic and playful portrait of old Lahore through the prism of a vanishing tradition and the people who give life to the city. A Sehra is a headdress worn by the groom during Pakistani weddings to ward off the evil eye. A 'sehra' is also a poem in praise of the groom.
Seduced by its visual beauty & social symbolism, I went to meet the workers, shopkeepers and inhabitants engaged in their daily tasks and invited them into a moment of fiction within their reality.
Paradoxically, while their faces disappeared under a veil of roses, their presence was made more visible within the bustling texture of Lahore. Without a face, the language of bodies tells many stories.
What these images do not convey is the glorious fragrance of the roses.
Lahore, Pakistan, January 2023