Her subjects are constantly longing — though never trapped in it. Nostalgia, memory, and the need for tenderness never leave any frame. A certain symphony passes through her different series.
In the dreamscapes she sees through her viewfinder, 29-year-old photographer Farheen Fatima, recipient of the Toto Photography Award (2022), whose work has been featured by Apple, Getty Images Reportage, and VSCO, it was people’s perception of her photographs that ‘guided’ her towards the themes she explored later.
“When I started photographing, many viewers pointed an underlying emphasis on memory. But in my head that was not what I was really exploring, in fact my canvas was blank. So, in a way it was a reverse process — and I started exploring nostalgia and memory. Loneliness is another element that touches me. Whenever out, I seldom see an individual alone with herself/himself. He is either on the phone or doing something to distract himself. What he is avoiding?”
This Chandigarh-based self-taught artist stresses she sees herself not just as a photographer but in fact a creative director.
She remembers spraying water on roses in order to get better pictures when she was in ninth grade — her first memory of photography. Adding that the effort has forever been to let the simple speak different languages, the photographer, whose work has been exhibited in Spain, Malaysia, Germany, and the US, including India, at the India Art Fair in New Delhi and the UAE at the Sharjah Art Foundation smiles, “Rather than just capturing an image, I prefer to create it, precisely why I draw and paint on my photographs,” says this M.A. History of Art passout from Panjab University.
Fatima feels the world metamorphoses when she looks at it through the viewfinder. Believing that everyone is a control freak and feels anxious when things and circumstances do not behave as they want them to, she admits to being quite an anxious person.
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