Street Photography And Shooting Pain

Street Photography And Shooting Pain, originally uploaded by firoze shakir photographerno1.

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Pain on the streets comes in different forms , some you feel some you see and some you imagine and relive on the emulsion of your human soul.

What I see through the viewfinder of my mind would be quite different from your own, there is no two ways about it.

As the bulk of my photography and 125797 images posted at Flickr from 2007 will show that I have shot the street , the greatest text book of lifes hidden and unhidden emotions.

With a camera in your hands you can shoot anything but it is the camera in your mind that makes you shoot what you want others to see.

I have honed my skill as a poet, photographing pain..shooting pain in its collective effervescence.. as blood splurting out from the skull the back or the chest when I shot Shia rituals ..but something was missing I took the dagger in my hand to understand this pain, I knew the ethnicity of my ancestral pain embedded in the Martyrdom of Imam Hussain..but I wanted to feel overcome moments of pain ,and I found what I was searching for..

So street photography is a very deep holistic subject not merely clicking fast moving cars on the road..street photography according to my humble view is shooting the soul of humanity as it moves from one plain to another as a street emotion..

A I have not learnt my photography in a classroom my views would be radically different from what they teach out there.

As here my street photography revolves around Shia pain , I shall not discuss other religiosity ..The Shia mother is the foundation of the Shia faith ..and it is not the Mullah at all , its the mother who imparts the essence of pain..from the amniotic fluid to the childs world beyond.

The Shia mother is a very rare breed , she is the one responsible for keeping the traditions alive , she molds the destiny of the Shia child through Ghame Hussain ,the mantra of Shia survival.


And being bought up by a Shia mother , and mind you I lived far away from the Shia ethos in my childhood , she nurtured it along with her mother Nazmi Begum widow of Daroga Nabban Saab of Pata Nala Lucknow my maternal grand father related to the poet Mir Anees saab.

My wife bought up our kids in the way she was bought up, and than almost 33 years later my 2 year old grand daughter Marziya Shakir bought up by her Lucknowi mother and my wife , strips to her waist to beat her chest..and as I come home from work she will be waiting for me before I reach Flickr or Facebook , she will do matam on the Noha of Ali Rizvi Sacchey and she does it like me leaping in the air..and it is a sheer photogenic moment but I dont shoot it..it is not for public view.

Mind you as I have been documenting her life since the second day of her birth , she showed all these signs of her religiosity and Faith without having gone to a Shia procession.

So the Shia mother is the beacon of light that lights up her childs soul towards the path of Hussainiyat.

I shot this picture during Chehlum..and today I embed it with text from my heart and it could have been titled Street Photography and Shiasm but pain suffices the need of this Shia blogger who shoots other religiosity as passionately as he shoots his own.

Street Photography is unveiling a world , beneath each tissue lies bleeding pain , provided you read pain as I read it when I cut open my scalp twice a year on the streets of Mumbai....Pain hurts when you inflict a dagger into your head as much as when you shoot it through the camera of your soul...at a Shia Mohram street procession.