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A man of contrasts
His shop is like no other jewellers’ in Karachi. “The only shop on Abdullah Haroon Road with a tree at the entrance” is a huge, unkempt one with a high ceiling, stark and austere, a far cry from the flashy glitzy jewellery shops on its parallel Zebunnisa Street. The walls are bare (save for an old framed photograph of some senior Javeri) as are most wall shelves, as if someone had ransacked the place, leaving behind the rusty-orange, almost threadbare carpet, some lovingly chiselled pieces in semi-precious stones placed in one showcase and some silver filigree pieces in the other.
At one far end sits Tapu Javeri, seemingly busy behind the computer, but it turns out that he’s been playing a computer game. He says candidly that he finds interviews boring. “I’ve not even kept a track of my interviews nor do I watch my recordings on television. I move on in life and they become old news.” Then why agree on giving one? “I like the repartee, the interaction,” he justifies.
It is best not to define Tapu Javeri, for as he talks, one realises he is a man of contrasts. He loves people, yet he is happiest being on his own. Both his pursuits — photography as well as painting — remain solitary passions. His shop walls may be bare but he reveals that “the walls at home are filled with paintings.” He likes to adorn his home’s walls with not just his own paintings but those of maestros like Anwar Saeed, Iqbal Hussain and Sadequain among others, as he is a collector.
He is also not too much of an extrovert and “has a few selected friends” whom he likes to be with. Yet, he is the presenter of an hour-long late Wednesday-night radio show Black Room on CityFM89 where he plays what he calls “a cross between jazz and chill house” (a kind of dance music, trance-like but with slower beat). “It’s great fun” and though he does not entertain live calls, there is “constant dialogue with the listeners and friends” who text message him all throughout the programme.
While most know him as a fashion photographer, if you ask him, his forte is doing portraits of people, and not always celebrities or known people, although the book I, Voyeur — going places with the haute noblesse — showcases 136 portraits of “the glitterati and the literati” in 2004. “I have loads of photographs of ordinary people who are as interesting for me as say, Meera or Musharraf.” He also discloses that he scrutinises each face he comes across as a potential subject. But one thing you cannot coerce him to do is wedding portraits.
While he’s had several group exhibitions and done extensive work on Karachi along with known names like Ayesha Vellani, Arif Mehmood, Danish Tapal among others, there has never been a solo showing of his work. “I had intended to have an exhibition to coincide with I, Voyeur, but I was not happy with the book, especially it’s printing, so I changed my mind.”
‘Creativity today means doing Stardust and Bollywood. It’s appalling the way we have begun to celebrate crap. We had glitz and glamour, but somewhere down the road, we decided to meld in tackiness as well,’ says Tapu Javeri
But there was one occasion when a group of photographers, himself included, were commissioned by a multinational organization to scout and get pictures from all over Pakistan. The work was to be compiled in a book form. “It was the late 1990s and it was an exciting prospect for which I went to Chitral. Unfortunately, the idea was disbanded just when we all had finished our work, and the book never saw the light of day.”
You can call him a storyteller of sorts: he interviews people with the camera capturing a moment, a spell, a mood. “I draw the subject into a conversation and then ease them into the mood I want them to be in. I talk to them while taking their snapshots so as not to distance myself,” he says. A “terrible talker otherwise” by his own admission, when the camera is in his hand and the subject before him, “conversation comes naturally” even if it’s a celebrity. “I don’t get overawed or intimidated by my subjects ever. My camera gives me that confidence.” And in the 20-odd years that he’s been taking countless snapshots of people, if he has any regrets, it was to miss the opportunity of snapping the late Pathanay Khan. “When finally I did get a chance to meet him, my camera was not by my side.”
Does he feel that the art of photography has been eclipsed by digital image-altering software? Javeri acquiesces that the art may have lost some purity of image, but nothing can scar the photographer’s imagination. “If technology has made the job easier and simpler, so much the better. I have no problems using that to my benefit.”
Tapu started his stint with the camera as a press photographer. He worked for a few years in Dawn and covered the usual newsworthy events that newspapers capitalise on. But to his mind, “that kind of work detaches the man behind the lens from humanity. It is tough to capture tragedy and at the same time, keep oneself sane and disregard what’s happening.” He could not sustain himself in that mitier for long. That was in the early ‘80s and the ‘90s, the martial law period during Ziaul Haq’s regime, when he was young, enthusiastic and at his creative best, roaming the backstreets of Karachi, keenly observing all that was happening behind the scenes.
“That was the time when you found pockets of creativity around town in the form of Jamil Dehlavi, Arif Mehmood, Fifi Haroon, Zainab Masood, Saania Saeed, Amin Gulgee and Aliya Mian among others,” he smiles nostalgically. “There was just no stopping us. We did everything we were not supposed to, tongue-in-cheek and between the lines just so that it became palatable for everyone.”Looking back, he marvels at their audacity and says, “But what has happened to people now? There are no restrictions; why are they not letting the creative juices flow? Nobody has surpassed what we dared to do then.” As though to answer the rhetoric, he says caustically, “Creativity today means doing Stardust and Bollywood. It’s appalling the way we have begun to celebrate crap. We had glitz and glamour, but somewhere down the road, we decided to meld in tackiness as well.”
About his other pursuit — painting — that he does in the thick of the night, he likes to describe it as “dreamscape and surreal, with images of religious icons.” Each artwork has a specific meaning, but which he doesn’t like to divulge. “I do give titles to all my work but even those are very vague.” Working in acrylic on canvas, he describes the technique “photo montage” where he uses paints and photographs both. Predominant colours are blues and browns. He’s had several group exhibitions and four solos and all his work has been a runway success.
“Almost all my work gets sold” (he saves three or four pieces for himself) “and I often wonder who buys my work. It’s awfully scary,” he says with a tinge of humour. His newest series of 30 to 40 canvases, which are going to be on the Grecian theme, is almost ready for showing.
The styling for Tazeen Hasan in the issue of May 7 was by Altaf at Nabila’s
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