KARACHI, Feb 5: A one-day photographic exhibition and auction titled 'Dignity' to benefit Acumen Fund and the Sindh Rural Support Organisation attracted art lovers at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture on Saturday.

The black-and-white and colour images had a wide range of subjects strung together with the common thread of 'dignity' of the people photographed by known local and international photographers. A majority of the pictures spoke volumes for the skill and creativity with which camera-clickers turn a moment (insignificant or meaningful) into a lifetime.

One remarkable piece was Ami Vitale's shot of the River Ganges (Varanasi, India). The image shows a young man jumping off a ghat into the river, airborne. Despite the fact that the picture is black and white, the dark clouds hovering over the sea impart a cinematic appeal to the photograph.

Another beautiful work of art was Alixandra Fazzine's image of Swat in which a man is holding an umbrella to protect himself from a heavy downpour. In dim light, the picture gives the feeling as if it is about a personal ordeal that the man is undergoing; actually it's pretty much a scenic view.

Tomas Munita's grab of a young kid in Ladakh, India, transports the viewer to that region not just visually but also by virtue of a certain empathy that s/he feels for the kid. The child is immersed in something with head down oblivious to the vast and beautiful landscape of Ladakh (in the background). It's a peach of a picture.

Two other remarkable images were Espen Rasmussen's snap of worshippers attending Friday prayers at a collapsed mosque three months after a devastating earthquake hit Kashmir in 2005 and Mikkel Ostergaard's top shot of a queue of people fleeing the IDP camp following disputed election results which triggered ethnic riots in Kenya. Both are taken from a distance, and fuse the locale and the people in a way that both become part of each other.