September 20, 2008	Saturday	Ramazan 19, 1429

KARACHI: This Ramazan, a couple of art galleries have experimented with the idea of organising shows in addition to traditional exhibitions of calligraphy held in the month of fasting. The one that opened at Canvas Gallery on Thursday took many people by surprise. On display are some fascinating portraits of different people – known and unknown – by Dr Altamash Kamal, who is famous as an IT wizard. Only his family members and close friends knew about his penchant for photography.

The shots are candid and very representative of the people, at least those we are acquainted with.

There are three images of columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee, all in a pensive mood. Then there is the close-up of journalist Ghazi Salahuddin again very representative of him. Sculptor Shahid Sajjad is caught in his workshop in his characteristic reflective mood, but his wife’s close-up, where she sports a disarming smile, gets more attention from the viewers. “Who is she?” this reporter heard someone asking the curator, Sameera Raja.

Altamash Kamal’s studies of children are delectable. He shows them in different moods and in different places. They are children from economically underprivileged background but their faces are rich with expressions. There are grown-ups too, the ones you may be tempted to call ‘the lowest common denominator’. They are the kind you find all over Karachi and don’t even remember them but Dr Altamash certainly make their portraits merit more than one look.

Most of the 35 images on display are in black-and-white. A few are in colour. Some subdued and at least a couple bright – depending on the theme. The show will continue till the 30th.

Altamash, who has a PhD from MIT, is a nuclear engineer by training, but he didn’t pursue a career in that field. “Due to moral constraints I decided to reinvent myself,” he told this writer, when he embarked on a career in telecommunication a decade and a half ago. He is now into software development and its exports, and has, for the last three years, been pursuing digital photography as a hobby. Thanks to this recent development in image making he has graduated from a party shutter bug to the one who is a serious amateur photographer. Though he has sold his photographs, but he doesn’t need to make a living out of them.—AN