Written by: Areej Ahmed
Posted on: December 18, 2019 | 
| 中文
Stories We Tell
Nurjahan Akhlaq’s work “Saving Daylight”, showing at Koel Gallery, Karachi, is a multifaceted project that seeks to integrate the past and present through the medium of photography. It depicts the nostalgia and longing with which we approach our personal and historic memories. The title of the exhibition “Saving Daylight”, came from writer Sara Suleri’s 1989 memoir, “Meatless Days”. It is a play on the idea of daylight savings, when the clock is turned back or forward one hour in the fall and spring time.
The Secret
Born into a family of artists, Nurjahan’s artistic education and inspiration came from her late father, Zahoor Ul Akhlaq, and her ceramist mother, Sheherezade Alam. After getting a degree from the National College of Arts in 1962, Zahoor Ul Akhlaq went on to become a pioneer of merging modernist art techniques, such as Cubism, with traditional South Asian techniques like miniature painting and calligraphy. His, as well as his daughter Jahanara’s sudden death in 1999, shook the entire artistic community. Since then, his daughter Nurjahan has taken his life and his work as a great source of inspiration.
Sunday Lunch, Right Before the Official Portrait Was Taken
However, Nurjahan developed her own interest in photography and film early on in her life. Her inspiration for this exhibition began with her childhood in the 1980s, when Lahore began massive urban development, which was a strange contrast to its historic buildings. She seeks to capture the country while it grew, changing and developing the political, economic and social fabrics within it. Archives from her grandfather’s travelogues and photographs, also had a significant role in showing that slow development over a longer period of time.
Vanishing Light
The work is based on this archival collection, covering a period of 50 years, from the 1950s to 2003. The images of families on vacation, and of the quiet stillness which they evoke, remind one of the photographs hung in our homes. They speak of our childhood or our parents’ childhood, creating a nostalgia that is accessible, yet very specific. Looking at these memories hanging against the walls of the corridors of our houses creates a sense of belonging and association.
The Lovers Were Ambassadors to Imaginary Utopias
This type of charming quality is not so easily captured by modern-day cameras. These photographs have all been re-photographed individually, and further printed on hahnemüle fine art paper, giving a slightly dreamy, sketch-like feel to them. Akhlaq plays with a spectrum of styles and colors, starting from family portraiture, architectural, landscapes, sports to forests, shrines, and vast open landscapes. One gets the sense that each picture has a story and an anecdote behind them, which may be funny, exciting or beautifully simple. And Akhlaq also captures the lifestyle of a particular class of people who lived in Lahore in the 80s, who existed between the luxuries of the old world and the new.
Untitled
The monochromatic series views these archives with wistfulness and romanticism about the simplicity of the past, when the family was the dominating aspect of people’s lives. The family is often the focal point for many of the pictures, but at the same time, it is the beauty of their surroundings that affect the family’s demeanor. Akhlaq’s images capture the physical surroundings, accompanied by emotional relationships that we form with places and people.
Untitled
As the photographs greet the viewers in the gallery, it makes them long for simpler times. They unexpectedly and instantly make the viewer aware of the warmth and love rendered through each photograph’s layers, capturing both the tangibility and intangibility of the moment. The viewer longs to be a part of the world that no longer exists, both for Akhlaq and themselves. Seeing these pictures, one wishes to go back in time, to give oneself an extra hour to revel in the comfort of the past.
The exhibition will stay on display at Koel Gallery till 27th December.
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