The Story
Hand-coloured portraits
“Photographers are very precise in how to get the right kind of pose for a certain montage – it has to look realistic in the end. Working in film, the photographer would create a negative from the desired movie poster, cut out the male protagonist’s head and place the client’s head on top. This can be done by double exposure in the darkroom or actually placing the negative on top of the other. It’s very precise work!”
With the hand-coloured portraits, we see the men of Peshawar as they wish to be seen, as heroes of their fantasies and dreams. These, combined with the traditional portraits of Saddar Road, give us a look at a culture that very much mirrors our own. The glorification of self – through the rendering of montages that precede Photoshop by decades and the exquisite hand-colouring processes that herald our current obsession with Snapchat filters – is a universal human desire that photography repeatedly fulfils, no matter East or West. See full article on Huck.
