KARACHI: Arif Mahmood has what most photographers don’t have — a distinct style. On looking at his images, you don’t have to tax your brain to find out the identity of the person behind them.

His photographs bear a stamp of innovativeness. In other words, he has the talent to make the ordinary look extraordinary.

He doesn’t have to wait for a fleeting moment to shoot a powerful image. What he captures is all around us. It’s just that we don’t have the mind’s eye to notice what doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

Proof are the black-and-white photographs Mr Mahmood has put on display at his solo exhibition at the Canvas Gallery, which opened on Aug 15 for nine days. The characters in the pictures, mostly unaware of the photographer’s presence, are the simple folks around us. His dramatis personae are the men in the street, in teashops and in marketplaces.

The exhibition, titled Multiple Spaces, comprises 26 images never shown by Arif Mahmood in any of his previous shows. One can describe them as frames within frames. He uses mirrors and glasses to create additional images within the same composition. It could be the mirror in a barber’s shop or the windowpane of a car or a looking glass that creates additional images.

Sometimes he uses windows or enclosed spaces to create the same effect, it may be a grille or a collapsible door or even a hole in a wall.

The one image fragmented into three, when photographed from behind a pair of pillars, is a case in point.

Another interesting image is a pock-marked compound wall, which is plastered with a semi-torn poster of the chief justice and another lawyer. Restricted by a barbed wire, they are seen raising their hands as vigorously as the slogans that they are chanting.

The angles that he chooses to shoot from are also unusual. So, the poster is a frame, within the mother-frame, which is the wall.

Another aspect of Arif Mahmood’s style is his play of light and shade, which assumes greater strength in monochromatic photographs, except that on this occasion they are more pronounced.

Even when he doesn’t use a black-and-white film, he avoids employing a wide variety of colours. The effect remains more or less monochromatic.

It is good to see that Arif Mahmood has finally quitted his job with the national airline. What doesn’t seem to be much of a loss for the PIA is a gain for photography.

He now handles his camera as also his new job of archiving images single-mindedly.

One hopes that the belated trend of looking at photography as an art form in our country will go from strength to strength and more galleries will follow Canvas’ (read Sameera Raja’s) example.