rench literary essayist and critic Roland Barthes believes that the language of photography allows its maker to share a personalised experience with the rest of the world. The way our eye experiences the pictorial surface is intimately influenced by our experience of time, memory and mortality.

Barthes’s concept of stadium and punctum allows us to analyse the phenomenon of looking at an image and being influenced by our logical mind which sums up the image’s information and meanings while constituting a personal meaning, one which cannot even be predicted by the photographer.

A similar concept is explored in an exhibition which opened at Haam Gallery, in DHA, recently. The pictorial exhibition, titled Once Upon a Time: Reimagining Narratives Through the Lens, curated by Sehrish Mustafa and Rabbania Shirjeel, provokes thought that leads the visitors/ viewers to ‘rediscover’ the world, as if with a fresh outlook.

The show’s vision is about creating a dialogue that challenges the act of image making and replaces the traditional mediums of pencil and brush with the lens. The works on display are a testament to the fact that every photograph and video projection ushers you into stories of wonder, love, tragedy and hope.

Moroccan filmmaker Sheherezade El Moumniz’s series of photographs on display resemble stills from a vintage film. Her interest in capturing fleeting beauty in its banality and chaos enables her to execute images that question the order of life. Her monochromatic series of human beings interacting with their environment are simple yet evocative.

In his work, Daytime Runner, Omer Bashir, a Karachi based photographer, re-imagines the daily chores of life with his chiaroscuro inspired lighting. Bashir’s life-size window scene leaves the viewer fluxed with images that appear more real than anything. Titled Abyss, his artwork has the illusion of a frame within a frame where one feels being in the same room as the man in the image and his thoughts. Eventually, the person in the photo no longer belongs to himself; rather, he becomes an object that the society at large is free to observe and associate themselves with.

The work on display is a testament to the fact that every photograph and video projection ushers you into stories of wonder, love, tragedy and hope. 

Laiba Aslam’s prints are an investigation of how the human skin absorbs external realities, whether intimate or worldly, and recreates definitions for the physical state. Her monochromatic prints resemble a state of documentation that is rather personal as she leaves traces of her artistic exploration.

The exhibition also features three video projections that seek to question the concept of using a lens to talk about the struggles of being human and existing in a complex social structure.

Zainab Saleem creates an interactive site-specific installation, which is imagined and coded with the movement of the human body. The viewers feel as if they co-exist with the stars and galaxies of the universe. The video projection evokes a strong sense of being infinite and lost in the daze. The artist re-imagines what it is like to be human and exist as a combination of cells and atoms, where one’s self-exploration becomes one’s flaw or a disorder amongst the society’s acquired ways of seeing.

In his satirical work, Bachpan Ke Ijlaas, Abdul Hadi explores the political situation of the country. It’s an impressive display of skills, where the artist incorporates CGI (computer generated imagery) to create scenes of a dystopian culture where he reconstructs the effects of political discrepancies on common citizens. Hadi’s use of shoes, chair, a red flag, a fork and a derailed train carriage, are all metaphors of a deeper situation.

Ali Shariq’s larger-than-life video projection, titled The Man, the Balloon, and the Walk in Perimeters of Square, is about a man walking continuously on the boundary of a hand chalked square while breathing into a red balloon. At first glance, the content of the artwork seems vague, but the idea of being on a never-ending journey and walking on pre-requisite paths become symbols of the futility of man-made issues which translate into capitalist boundaries.

The exhibition continues through May 7

The writer is an artist who trained as a miniature painter from National College of Arts