July 20, 2008	Sunday	Rajab 16, 1429

KARACHI: Farah Ahed is a photographer with a cause. Through the eye of the lens she tries to capture the realities of everyday life which surround us, focussing primarily on the less privileged on this earth. The result is poignant images which speak for themselves.

Her love for photography could be traced to her artist grandfather and photographer father, both architects, and thus her love affair with photography began from a very young age. Her father gave her a camera at the age of four. Combining her passion with her talent and hard work it eventually paid off when she became the finalist in the Best of College Photography Annual 2007, and one of the photographers chosen in the National Geographic’s daily dozen segment. Compiling her work and printing it in book form earned her a Richter Fellowship grant.

A photographic exhibition by Farah Ahed titled ‘Dialogue’ was launched on Friday. The photos, mostly portraits, had one thing in common, their expressions, which seemed to hold a conversation with the onlooker and thus the title ‘Dialogue’.

One of her subjects in college being photojournalism, she plans to do her masters in photography. Her work thus is primarily photojournalistic with a preference for portrait photography.

Travelling to different countries such as India, Bangladesh and America, Ahed has focussed basically on culture and everyday, mundane happenings and thus touches on diverse topics. But her forte is definitely faces which are very vivid in their expression. The vibrant shades in her colour photos bring her images to life but she gets carried away in some of them giving it an unnatural look. When asked about it, the 23-year-old artist replied, “I like to experiment and play with colours now and then to see the effect, but most of the photos have natural colour and I also like to dabble in sepia according to the relevance of the subject.” She works with a digital camera and gives them a photoshop touch where required.

This is ‘Farah Ahed’s first exhibition of the photos taken in the past four years.