KARACHI: Make no mistake, there’s no dearth of talent in the field of art in the country. An exhibition of photographs taken by students of the Alliance Francaise de Karachi that opened at the French cultural centre on Tuesday is a convincing example of it.

Out of the 15 students who graduated on May 2 after successfully completing a diploma course, 10 have put their works on view.

All of them seem to have a sharp sense of space and light.

John Anthony’s black and white images stand out. He shows a deep interest in music, therefore his subjects come from that genre of art (which goes to show the inter-connectedness of all forms of expression).

He grabs musicians’ images when they are immersed in performance (a guitarist banging his head to get a riff right or a drummer trying to extract the right sound out of a snare drum etc). This imparts a sense of motion to a still image — a delightful thing to see in photography.

Farheen Waseem’s Photoshop collage resulting in a lovely picture of a child speaks volumes about the hard work that she’s put into a single frame. According to the students’ teacher Rahmatullah Khan, the collage is a compilation of numerous tiny photos coming together to make a big, beautiful image.

M. Hassam impresses with his ability to use natural light. His interpretation of a day in the historic necropolis of Makli Hill is pretty striking — the sun in the background beating down on an old structure, shading it as if it does not want to reveal an age-old secret.

The rest of the participating artists are: Shabbir Hussain, Umer Saeed, Hamza Yousufani, Meesam Ali, Anjum Hussain, Anam Zehra and Sania Sartaj.

The exhibition will run until May 8.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2017