Do People Really Have Time For The Shoe Shine Boy?, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.
127,767 items / 932,194 views
He does not beg he told me, but business is really bad on a prime piece of land called Bandra Hiill Road.
Next month will be worse when the rains set in.
So he begged me to give him some money he had not eaten since morning.
And he is stylish too in his beggarly way of making money through shining shoes.
And this is life on a slow track, normally he has a few shoe shine boys with him , but I had not seen them since the time I shot them a few months back.
Ironically this is street photography, I shoot life on the street and as I saw it, others see him too with or without a camera , does not really matter.
I shoot what touches me and what touches me may not touch you with the same fervor or intensity.
I see pictures all the time and all the time I have my camera on me but I dont shoot all the pictures I see , I shoot impulsively I shoot randomly.
I see things differently I read right light that falls on my subjects soul through poetry.
So my photography has a metaphoric purpose it connects with a part of your mind too, sometimes my audience base right from the beginning was the outside world , perhaps the white mans world as I was nurtured on blogs at Buzznet among most of my white friends , Indian websites kicked my ass out either I was a confused Muslim or my language was far too filthy for the Brahmins of the ChemburMatunga belt..I was shown the door at Sulekhas,
So from Buzznet I came to Flickr and I began posting pictures since 2007 June , I have had my ups and downs as a blogger and as a human being I am not perfect and neither are you..
You maybe more intelligent than me perhaps a better photographer poet than me but I am not competing with you , I am not debating with you , I am hardly a scholarly time neither am I a Mullah.Nor am I proselytizing my Shia faith on you.. if such was my devious agenda I would not be shooting other religiosity.
With the same fervor as I shoot my own.
When people dont like blood or hate my pictures than it is not for just what I shot but simply their Islam has no place for the Shia school of thought.
On Facebook a friend of a my Hijra Guru seeing my Shia bleeding pictures called them Madness and gave me a huge spiel on his likes and dislikes of his mental make up, I did not want to be punished by his comments on my future posts I removed him from my friends list and blocked him too.
I did this without malice or any evil intention.And I complained about him to my Hijra Guru ..he is her poster boy too like me.
And he came in to shoot the Maryamma Feast with a friend it did not matter , but I asked myself is the Shia madness different from the Tamil rod piercing madness.
We shed blood so it is madness and it is our blood not yours or an innocent bystanders , so why such a biased attitude..and you shoot the Tamil feast because there is no blood I dont get it.
So being a photographer who does not sell his pictures or his pedestrian text is a tough one.
So I shoot pictures alone not for any selfish reason , simply because the white mans mind sometimes is a very difficult pompous biased commodity to appease even barefeet with all the humility in the world.
The only exception would be one white man Dr Glenn Losack.. I would give my life for him.. He is the only person in this wide world a Brooklyn Jew who is my blood brother.
The only person who offered a blank cheque for Marziya's future education which we politely refused.
Marziyas father is a very upright man and he talked Glenn out of it.
So my relationship with Glenn Losack is a very deep one , we dont get along we fight but we bond.We are brothers soul mates call it what you may.
I dont come in any photographers way when they are shooting but yes I do shoot them while they are shooting so their loved ones can see their antics across the ocean miles away on Flickr or Facebook.
And I got up to write this I wanted to bring out some bitterness of a past episode and I did it through the help of the shoe shine boy of Bandra Hill Road.
He earns and begs with dignity ..and subconsciously it was his angst that became a vehicle for my own dark thoughts.
It is 4.30 am .. Mumbai
