After a long silence, Full Circle Gallery is back with a brand new photography exhibition by a US-based photographer Riaz Khan. The show is presented as the photographer’s conversation with his home city after being away for 10 years, kind of like a prodigal son returning and proudly displaying a condensed form of his experiences and acquired skills. The fact that these photographs are outtakes from his commissioned and personal projects over the years and are used to introduce himself to Karachi is a refreshing respite from profound themes and disquieting concerns. We get to experience an artist clicking as he wills, resulting in art in its purest form.

Khan is one of the victims of our society’s incessant need to validate itself by mass-producing doctors, lawyers and engineers. After moving abroad to study medicine, he soon realised he did not have an aptitude for it, and tried to reconcile his interests by switching to neuropsychiatry. Different cultures, behaviours and individuals had interested him since childhood, and soon ideas of human stories began to hold his fascination.

At the same time, he became involved in the growing music landscape in Detroit where he was living, moonlighting as a concert photographer for various publications and websites. This is where a lot of the images in this show emerge from. Soon he realised he wanted to do this professionally, quit medicine and became a full-time commercial photographer.

Riaz Khan’s dialogue with Karachi exposes us to his 10 years away in the space of 17 images, but more than connecting us with his work, the show is about reconnecting him with his roots

The images here, however, don’t have the commercial visage where flashy lighting illuminates every nook and cranny of the fantastical subject matter. They are more artistic, warm and intimate, with an animated energy, which is the result of him using only the ambient light available to him.

The shots he has framed are a mixture of environments and portraits, but the portraits are not portraits in the traditional sense; more like an encapsulation of a person in a particular moment. In most photos we do not see faces but a cropped area of the body capturing a mood, or a character, leaving much to imagination and interpretation.

This is apparent in the image with a woman’s legs in fishnet stockings and woollen knee-high socks with a drink on her lap at a concert, but it could easily be at a party, at a club, in a restaurant, or at home, and the woman could be anyone at all. The artist’s decision to frame the shot thus renders all that irrelevant and reveres the moment and the feeling it evokes. Similarly there is a shot of a man from behind, another man leaning on a piano, patterns of light falling on a woman lost in music, a couple of men next to a pool table and a tray of liquor shots, all of which crop out or exclude the face and capture the atmosphere.

This ambiguity is enriched by the movement and energy in the photos. Certain images seem to vibrate with colour. However there is also a sense of serenity. An image of silhouetted hands raised at a concert is a familiar scene, stirring up feelings of joy, exhilaration and thrill, but at the same time is somehow still and somber, like a transcendent moment. On the other hand, the image with a close-up of a woman’s back and a man’s arm around her reaching inside her dress has a charged passionate energy. They seem to be in the middle of a waltz and you can almost taste the moment. Again, the zoom and crop help make the image so much more powerful.

As Khan talks about his process of blending into the background, quietly observing and waiting for the perfect light and scene to emerge, I wonder aloud why he chose these particular moments and subjects to frame his shots. He seems unable to pinpoint what exactly went through his mind at the time. Perhaps it was more spontaneous; as the moment took place it moved him and he knew this was the shot he was waiting for.

An exception to all this is the large portrait of Qurram Hussain, lead vocalist of the South Asian fusion band Josh, which greets the audience as they enter. This close-up of him screaming with his eyes squinched, tongue out and hair wild, is like an anti-glamour shot of the musician all dressed up for a photo shoot. Khan recounts how, exhausted and frustrated after a day’s worth of shooting with the band, he asked Hussain to let loose, which resulted in this expressive shot that has stayed with him to this day.

Riaz Khan’s dialogue with Karachi exposes us to his 10 years away in the space of 17 images, but more than connecting us with his work, the show is about reconnecting him with his roots. The imagery is very blatantly foreign which makes it interesting to view in Karachi and wonder where and when it might have been taken. It would be exciting to see if these aesthetics will be reconciled with his Pakistani cultural roots in his next show or will they take a completely new direction altogether.

‘A dialogue with Karachi’ was held at the Full Circle Gallery in Karachi from August 26 till September 16, 2016

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, September 18th, 2016