Backstage in Karachi
A photo-essay by Umer Sheikh
The city unfolds on the streets. It’s like a ceaseless theatre that never ends. Those who act in its stories, and those who write them, walk its streets every day. After being both an audience member and a participant in this powerful play, I started feeling curious as to what happens backstage in the metropolis. My curiosity and fascination with these backrooms and blind spots of chaos and development kept growing as I increasingly photographed the overlooked.
Very often, while walking around the old town, I would almost intuitively take a new turn, walk down a different alley, or, with slight hesitation, walk inside old shops and colonial dwellings. On every occasion, I encountered the most surprising places that I might never have imagined to exist. These encounters included coming across spiral staircases that led nowhere; a man who could almost have been a weathered statue, who, with hollow eyes and completely disregarding my presence, continued to stare past and through me as I walked into his space; a 19th-century building almost at the brink of collapsing upon itself, with deities carved into its walls; and a printing press’s backroom filled with the leftovers of New Year’s calendars.
Umer Sheikh is a documentary photographer and writer based in Karachi. His practice centres around documenting impermanence, heritage architecture, street life and the work and worlds of artists. His work often focuses on spaces that are disappearing or overlooked, capturing moments that hold time, history and quiet beauty. In 2023, Umer was Highly Commended at the Photography Foundation Awards in London.
Beautiful!
Loved it!