1. What is your earliest memory of how or what attracted you to photography?
I can’t point to any particular moment, memory, or event that I could construct or argue was where my interest in photography began. But more importantly, I was never really interested in photography alone. As a discipline, I never found photography exciting or appealing as an artistic / aesthetic medium. Photography was a means to an argument, allowing me to do other things. Yes, I loved playing with cameras and taking pictures and was doing that well over ten years before I became a professional. Whenever it caught my attention, photography complimented something — an argument, an issue, or a concern. What took me a while to understand was how to use photography to say something or incorporate it as an argument. I appreciated Salgado’s earliest works; Terra: Struggle of the landless was one of the first photographic works that moved me, not just because of the aesthetics of his images but also because they were married to an issue that I felt something for or related to.
2. How did you find yourself becoming a photographer after moving to New York in 1984 to study engineering at Columbia University?
I received my B.Sc. in engineering, and I also completed an MBA from Columbia some years later. I worked in New York for 10–12 years before quitting. It is too long and, frankly, too uninteresting a story about how and why I made the shift. I will say, however, that it wasn’t easy, and it took time. It was nearly three years before I could leave a professional life that promised regularity, security, routine, respect, and community belonging. The transition from something you were raised, educated, and encouraged to do, i.e., a professional career in technology and engineering, towards something else can be done. Still, it takes time and it takes focus.
3. Did you study photography formally in a college or university? How else did you inform yourself about the medium — the techniques, the language, and the aesthetics of it?
No, I did not. I could see no point in it. I still see no point in it. I certainly took selected workshops as a way to work and learn from others, but I wasn’t interested in spending time in the classroom. I turned to photography to be in the world and learn from the field and the communities I wanted to talk about. As I mentioned above, photography was only enjoyable as long as it allowed me to say something about the world, about issues that concerned me and that I wanted to share with others. I was impatient and wanted to get out there. Also, I was not impressed with most of the programs I could see or find. Most were very technocratic and focused on building ‘careers,’ and I feared they would reduce me to another technically proficient, revenue-centered professional. I wanted to avoid falling into some profession again — I wanted photography and my work with the camera and text to remain messy, individual and equally risky. Besides, you don’t need to attend a formal program to learn photography. You go to a proper program to become a professional. The photographers who had inspired me most had real degrees — economics, anthropology or some other such social science, and brought their disciplinary knowledge to their projects. This was more interesting. I went back to do an MA in social anthropology a few years ago and am now doing a PhD for the same reason: to keep learning and bring that learning into my projects.
4. If you were to design a photo program for young Pakistani photographers, what would it look like?
I have designed a few programs. For The Polis Project (www.thepolisproject.com) — the humanities collective that Suchitra Vijayan and I started some years ago — I created a decolonial photography program. We taught our first session in New York in 2019. Currently, this program is on hold because of the Covid-19 situation. I have recently designed a more extensive program for a possible new photography institution in India. We are still in the early stages of the design. Still, I outlined an educational approach that I felt was needed to counter the rather old and outdated ways of teaching photography that continue. Unlike other photography programs, the Polis program combines disciplines but, most importantly, helps students to learn how to think through issues multi-disciplinarily, not just through photographs. We also push students to break down the Eurocentric eye, to understand how the world is framed through Western eyes and how that can be broken down and challenged. A Eurocentric gaze is not an aesthetic question but an epistemic and ontological one. Our goal is to teach students to approach issues from a new angle, to shun packaged perspectives on complex human and social issues, and to explore multi-disciplinary research that can open their photography and projects to new possibilities.
It is a very demanding program, and when I taught an early version of it in Pakistan in 2016, it was obvious that not everyone would want to be a part of it. Nearly 60 percent of my students just wanted to take nice photos. Luckily, the 40 percent that was committed to its goals have gone on to do quite well in their projects. But these are experiments, and we at The Polis Project continue with them. Conventional workshops and masterclasses — whether at Magnum or World Press Photo — are not moving past old methods and remain stuck in their Eurocentric presumptions about the world. There is a danger here if we keep venerating Western workshops and teachers, which needs to change. I am not suggesting that there isn’t much they can teach us about how to see the world through the camera, but what I fear — and what we are addressing through our workshops at The Polis Project — is that students are also coming back thinking that they can tell us how to see the world itself. Too many students are coming back mired in Eurocentric conceptions and discourses.
5. Who or what has inspired you to pursue photography and/or continues to do so?
The most significant influences have been John Berger, Jean Mohr and Edward W. Said. Their collaborations and books were and remain the high-water mark. Books like John Berger’s and Jean Mohr’s A Seventh Man, or John Berger’s and Edward Said’s After the Last Sky, are brilliant and essential bodies of work that I still keep close to me. Their example of bringing together writing, photography, social sciences, history, economics, and politics showed me what was possible if one just had a pen, a small camera, and half a brain to see and feel the world sensitively and honestly.
6. Do you ever find yourself creatively “stuck?” Is there something that is particularly helpful to you in overcoming this?
I am often stuck. I also have done many projects that just failed. I am not sure what being “stuck” even means. Everyone has a process, a way of working, and times and sensibilities that move them to produce different things at different moments. Just because you are not producing photographs does not mean you are stuck. When I am not creating or can’t be bothered to make photographs, I usually read, research, or enjoy being with my daughter. There have been weeks when I have just been at home or in some rented apartment in some city, just doing little more than reading books and scribbling useless ideas that never seem to go anywhere. I think this idea of “stuck” needs to be questioned because it assumes that all a photographer does is make photos or work on a project. I don’t think things work that way at all. For example, when I write, 80 percent of my time is spent doing what looks like procrastination. I can think about and write the essay in a day or two. At the moment, I am not working on anything. The body of work I wanted to do in 2020 did not go so well, and I had to stop because I realized that I had not thought through the work, my research was poor, and the images were not going anywhere. I have not shot anything since. I don’t think I am stuck, just recalibrating and rethinking things. There are incredibly productive photographers — I have always been in awe of Karl de Keyzer’s productivity — but I am not that sort of photographer because photographs as objects, or producing them as objects, aren’t that interesting to me. So, if I am not making photographs, I am working on something else. And sometimes, I am just not working on anything, which is fine.
7. Digital technology has changed photography drastically over the years. Do you believe the changes have been good for the medium or not? Why?
I think we overestimate how much ‘digital’ technology has changed photography. We are still using cameras, working in the digital darkrooms, and producing and working on assignments. The much celebrated “freedom” of digital hasn’t translated into too many people “breaking out” into major independent careers. Most popular professional photojournalists on the internet are still closely associated with major magazines or wire agencies. There are some exceptions, but not too many.
It has changed the political economy of the news and publishing industry, which has had catastrophic consequences for photography, particularly professional photojournalism. But the fact remains that the dominant media corporations are still the dominant media corporations, and instead, we have more precarity and insecurity as professional photographers. I think not enough attention has been paid to the impact that greater corporatization, labor issues, reliance on freelancers and so on — all made possible because of digital — have had on the way we work today and what we work on today.
That being said, digital has allowed individuals to find new ways of disseminating and developing their projects and works. Digital has allowed those who otherwise cannot get into the doors of a mainstream publication to produce work, publish it online and build their support communities. There are many examples of photographers who are independent of journals and editors and rely on the support of an online community. So yes, much has changed, but the most radical changes have been how we can now think about, design, produce, execute, disseminate and distribute our projects. Since 2010, I have worked only on self-funded, independent, long-term projects in India and Pakistan. At that stage, I left the professional magazine editorial world because I could do my work, find my support, and focus more on the projects I was interested in. This would not have been possible even 15 years ago. This is also a significant area of focus of our workshops — to show students how to design projects beyond a photo essay or a magazine’s publishing pages. We are trying to show students how to design and develop projects that can stand independently and beyond just the pages of a publication.
8. Do you think there is a universal language that photography uses? Do you think that Pakistani photographers are finding that they are judged by western criteria and standards?
I think the issue is less about universal language and more about how the dominant, most lucrative markets for photographers remain in the West. Whether editorial or art or other, our works are judged through a Eurocentric eye, and if it’s editorial, through the political priorities and interests of the West. I also want to add that this Pakistan vs. the West divide is false; I am placed in both geographies and Europe. Most of us with the privilege of working in the arts or photography come from multi-geographical and multi-societal backgrounds. We are comfortable moving between worlds, which is today the everyday experience of many post-colonials. So, these divides make no sense. I refuse to let anyone label me as a ‘Pakistani photographer’ because not only does that deny my actual lived experience, but it also privileges the West as normal and all the rest as ethnically specific.
The judgements by Western criteria that concern me the most are political criteria. In geographies of U.S. imperial wars and occupations, U.S. editors and magazines judge works based on how well they fit into their ideas of these geographies or how well they reflect imperial political priorities. You can achieve a lot of success in the West bringing back stories of Islamic fanatics, women oppressed by Muslim men, poverty and other such clichés because they sit easily and comfortably into the West’s progressive racist frames (here I am using Sara Ahmed and her discussion about progressive racism see here: https://feministkilljoys.com/2016/05/30/progressive-racism/). We are judged in reductive ways that are less about a universal language of photography and more about a Eurocentric, often racist, language of Western liberalism and its inherently racist presumptions about the superiority of Western culture and society. These presumptions stain the works of many humanitarian human rights, women’s rights and other NGOs that profoundly influence our communities in the global south. They are quickly adopted by media institutions and then deployed in assessments of works. (See Joseph Massad’s work Islam in Liberalism or the writings of Inderpal Grewal, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Spivak, Deepa Kumar, Sara Ahmed for more.)
So, I am more concerned about how this European / Western progressive racism constricts and impedes our ability to see the world outside Western frames. This is the greatest challenge given that so many artists, intellectuals, photographers, writers, and liberals from the global south have unquestioningly accepted these Western liberal frameworks and are producing works from the worldwide south confirming European prejudices and ideas. This is a far more extended discussion, of course.
9. How would you describe your experience as a member of NOOR? Can you describe how, in your opinion, NOOR differs from other agencies?
I don’t have a lot to say about my time at NOOR. It was interesting, but we were not a good fit. I joined the collective when I was no longer interested in editorial work, and NOOR is primarily an organization focused on editorial and magazine assignment work. What makes NOOR such a success is that almost everyone in the organization has built an individual career around editorial content and has deep and long-term relationships with publications. So, whereas it was an exciting experience, I was never really at home there because of this difference. This isn’t a NOOR issue; in the end, my work and interests have been a bit too varied and, at times, random to fit into any particular photography / photojournalism organization.
I am not just a photographer and have not been for nearly ten years. My projects are not just photography projects; I don’t conceive or design them to be just that. So, even as I joined NOOR, it was apparent that this wouldn’t be long-term. It was good as an experience – I got to discuss ideas with some very talented and experienced photographers – but it was never home. In the end, I had to decide to leave because I wasn’t contributing the way NOOR needed me to, and NOOR wasn’t able to support my interests the way I wanted them to. I think I had just misunderstood where I had wanted to go, and it was only after joining NOOR that it became more apparent.
10. Why did you decided to shift from photography / photojournalism after having been successful at it for ten years or so?
I have been asked this often and have never had a sufficiently elaborate answer to the question. At its most superficial, most ordinary level, I drifted away from photojournalism because I became bored of it; its reductive ways of seeing and representing the world, its subservience and near unthinking allegiance to imperialism, capitalism, and profoundly racist / Eurocentric world views.
There is a conventionalism to photojournalism, one born of the conventionalism that pervades mainstream Western journalism, that continues to represent and speak about the world in simplistic, reductive, culturally essentialist and frankly untenable ways. Conventionalism produces mostly copycat works that feed on a vampirish pursuit of titillation and voyeurism and, more often than not, exploits subjects (mainly black and brown subjects) and presents them in dehumanizing, animalistic ways. This may sound harsh, but only to those who continue to ‘venerate’ the craft and ignore its foundational and structural problems. I just got bored of the industry, its gatekeepers and practitioners, the surprisingly infantile and simplistic nature of their knowledge about the world, and the shocking lack of curiosity about it. I just got bored of it.
11. How has your understanding and relationship with the photograph evolved from when you began making images to where you are now, pursuing a PhD program?
I am now interested in discovering ways of perceiving and experiencing the world beyond the frames of the nation-state, capitalism, and bourgeois society. My PhD is about finding other perceptions, knowledge, and ways of human to other-than-human relations that go beyond what Enrique Dussel called the “developmental fallacy.” I am trying to unpack other ways of being in the world. I am doing this by working with communities outside the ecologically destructive, economically impoverishing and violent world of modernist development, the nation-state imaginary and capitalist pursuits.
My work is in Pakistan, where there is a growing awareness of the ecological, social, communal, and moral cost of the country’s unthinking commitment to industrial development, neoliberal capitalism, unquestioned allegiance to imperial interests, and endless reliance on debt. From within this set of realities, launching movements of resistance and refusal remains challenging for many and unthinkable for most. Those who have tried are met with extreme repression and violence in return. If we only perceive the world through normative frames of power, nation-states, and capitalism, we lose sight of the many different ways of being and challenging these normative structures. Pakistan remains a rich space of refusal and remaking of the social order, most of which are either “invisible” to ordinary people or erased by the state’s actions. But I find that it is in these edge spaces and small acts of politics (to refer to Asef Bayat’s work on the local as the political and political transformation of the whole that can emerge from small actions of the local) where one finds new perceptions and new ways of seeing the world. It is from here that I hope to find a new photograph as well. I hope this makes sense; I am leaving behind, having become bored of, conventional photojournalism because of its allegiance to normative (capitalist, imperialist, racist, Eurocentric) ways of seeing and speaking about the world. I am working with communities that live outside these frames, offer richer and more complex relations to the world around them, and remain repositories of other knowledge and ways of being that can show us hope to escape modernity’s destructive and violent promise.
I am not making photographs anymore, but spending time learning to see in new ways. The pictures will come afterwards. It doesn’t matter, even if they don’t.
12. How and why did the idea of the Un/Do Photography Workshop for The Polis Project came about? How did the first session go in New York in 2019 (which was supported by the MurthyNAYAK Foundation), as compared to a similar one that you did some years ago in Pakistan?
The Un/Do Photography program emerges from the realization that photography education hasn’t advanced much despite the many changes we have witnessed in the emergence of digital technologies, the media and political economy and the emergence of the decolonial movements worldwide. That is why photojournalism, in particular, remains trapped in outdated and outmoded forms of teaching and training and remains deaf to the many voices speaking out against Eurocentricity, neocolonial structural systems and the continued silencing and negation of other voices.
I remember being invited to a Magnum-supported workshop in Beirut where a teacher earnestly taught students to do linear photo essay layouts. And this was in 2016! What were the chances that any of these students would ever get their stories into a major U.S. magazine where a linear layout process would matter? Was it not far more likely that they needed to design their works for a non-linear digital world where they could use photos but also tons of other assets and materials – maps, essays, videos, archive images, found objects, audio, illustrations, and other sensory materials – to design and create complex and multi-dimensional works? This is what we wanted to do with the Un/Do Photography program. I have been teaching this way since 2016 when we launched the first Pakistan Photography Mentorship program as part of the Pakistan Photo Festival 2016.
Un/Do Photography also teaches students to break away from Eurocentric and onto epistemic understanding of the world. We teach ways of thinking, not just how to take a photo. We teach about histories of colonial visual representations, the role of international NGOs in perpetuating Eurocentric ideals whose histories reside in colonial difference, we unpack the imperial desires behind “human rights,” we discuss issues of representation and power, we engage students and challenge them to question presumptions such as journalistic “objectivity” and reveal its roots in white supremacy and more. This is a new age, and those old models of photography careers are dead and gone. And thank goodness for that. The gatekeepers of the past are buried, and we are free of their repressive, Eurocentric hegemony and no longer have to wait for their approval to build careers and launch complex bodies of work. There are new strategies for funding, project design, and support that students need to learn about.
I am very proud of my students from Pakistan who have built independent careers not just as photographers, and some have gone on to join PhD programs and MA programs based on the projects they worked on with me in the Mentorship Program and are emerging as complex and multifaceted professionals. I am proud that none are beholden to some editor in New York or waiting for a call from Time magazine. They have moved and created and built their careers. Un/Do Photography is about teaching students to think independently and be independent. We did these sessions in New York, but they were shorter. The Pakistan program was a 3-4 month effort, while NYC was only a week or so. We can achieve a lot in a week, but the more time we can be there for the students, the more effective we can be and help them take risks and think differently. I loved the NYC sessions, but I want to not only do more but have them be longer and have a plan to follow up with the students afterwards. To undo frames of colonialism, capitalism, etc.
13. With your years of experience, of the lessons you have learned, what is the one thing you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
I should have more confidence in my ideas than in those that arrive as an assignment from a magazine. Back in 2001/2002, things were still very old-school: a few magazines to work with, a few editors to approach, pitch stories, show portfolios, pander to the interests of Western editors, and cater your work in such a way that it sounded interesting to the European and so on. I had many ideas but needed a means of funding them. I was so caught up in being a photojournalist that I did not realize I could be something else and still produce fantastic photography projects. I got caught up in the life of photojournalism rather than focusing on the importance, by any means necessary, of creating compelling works. I now know many fine photographers working on fine and complex projects that they fund through regular jobs or money-making careers as wedding photographers. They have a freedom I lacked in my early years because I was accountable to assignments and commissions and had to shoot what others wanted.
I entered the industry just as it was dying. The early 2000s and perhaps the late 1990s were the swansong of the old-school photojournalism world. Today, or those entering this field, have many new possibilities and ways of working. I did not have that many possibilities, although I eventually found them. I am grateful for that. I could extricate myself from my desires and aspirations and find more meaningful and sustainable ones. I did this by seeing myself not as a mere photographer but as a complete individual – writer, photographer, filmmaker, and researcher – and this allowed for more options and choices for how to do work and fund it. This multi-faceted sense of self is also a big part of what Un/Do Photography workshops are about. As I said, we teach in a new way and teach students not to think of themselves as camera operators or aesthetic gymnasts.
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Photograph © Asim Rafiqui
20 November
