I had known Akhtar Mirza as a photographer who is deeply devoted to his art. But after going through his newly-published book, Meeras-e-Adab: Urdu Riyasat, I feel a bit confused. Is he a photographer or a writer or a mixture of both as is reflected in this collection?

The book is an amalgamation of photographs and pen sketches of people, mostly writers. It has 73 photographs and in between writers we find here and there personalities belonging to other fields, such as Sardar Shaukat Hayat Khan, Dilip Kumar, Raza Mir, Dr Asrar Ahmad, Allama Iqbal and Enver Sadeed. Taken together, they form, in the eyes of the compiler, an Urdu riyasat.

Mirza is primarily a photographer. In the foreword to Meeras-e-Adab he talks in detail about his love for photography, which he traces to his early years. In this respect he owes much to his elder brother, Ehsan Mirza, who was in possession of two cameras, an Argus and Exakta, and was kind enough to allow his younger brother to use the Argus and teach him how to take photographs.

Mirza tells us about wandering in jungles keenly observing nature through the lens of his camera. One, he says, should have an eye to see the changing colours of nature. The camera will help us observe deeply and see what is not visible to the naked eye. “I have seen much and have learnt a lot thanks to the eye of my camera,” he writes. “My camera has been my teacher. Then came a time when I gained mastery over the camera.” Mirza recalls the moment when he, with the help of his camera, made the portrait of a malang. The result was good and he liked the portrait. In consequence, he developed a liking for portrait photography.

This collection of portraits starts with that of Allama Iqbal. Mirza’s devotion to Iqbal will appear to us quite natural as he too belongs to Sialkot. But, interestingly, he was introduced to Iqbal in Aligarh. He recalls the year 1944 when he got admission in class three in a school in Aligarh. “My Urdu teacher, Maulvi Abdul Hameed, clad in white from head to foot, impressed me very much. On my first day in class he marked me out and asked me to stand up.

‘Where have you came from?’‘From Sialkot’ I replied. ‘From Sialkot?’ he gazed at me for a moment and then with a soft smile he said, ‘So you have come from Shehr-i-Iqbal.’”

When he went back to Sialkot for the summer holidays, Mirza asked his mother the meaning of Shehr-i-Iqbal. She laughed in reply and said, “‘When you turn to the left from your street the house standing there may be taken as Shehr-i-Iqbal.’ She then explained to me that Iqbal was a great poet. He was a Sialkoti born in that house.”

Such was the way Akhtar Mirza was introduced to Iqbal and he slowly and gradually developed a sense of devotion to the poet. He has devoted many pages talking about the poet and his father, who was called Baba Noori.

Perhaps it was under the spell of Iqbal that Mirza developed an interest in Urdu poetry and writers in general, and so started taking photographs of them. It was 30 years ago that he conceived a plan to bring out a volume with portraits of personalities along with his impressions about them. Thus the photographic portraits are followed by pen portraits, making a volume of more than 600 pages.

Mirza has thus devised the way to see man in two ways. He sees his subject firstly through the eye of the camera. Then he sees him with his observant eye, and tries to understand him. Each personality is subjected to double scrutiny. While he is a seasoned photographer and an expert in his art, the writer in him too does not lag behind. It is in a lively way that he starts describing the personality as he came in contact with him and in each case his findings are interesting. The personality, as portrayed by him, comes alive to us.