“Photography in Kashmir has emerged as a powerful witness to its troubled present. Over the past 30 years a remarkable generation of photographers has steadily illuminated a little understood period of contemporary life in Kashmir. Rooted in the everyday of photojournalism and stretching away from those limitations when they can, this stunning body of work has challenged the established images of Kashmir—as a beautiful landscape sans people; as an innocent paradise; and more recently, as a paradise beset by mindless violence.
Witness / Kashmir 1986-2016 / Nine Photographers brings together more than 200 photographs by a selected group of practitioners. The oldest amongst them was already a working professional in 1986, and the youngest had not turned 20 in 2016: Meraj Ud Din / Javeed Shah / Dar Yasin / Javed Dar / Altaf Qadri / Sumit Dayal / Showkat Nanda / Syed Shahriyar / Azaan Shah.
The accompanying text by documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kak draws from conversations with the photographers to bring out the complex relationship that each one of them has with photography, and the various ways in which they balance it with their commitment to their ow lives, and to Kashmir. At once insightful, unsettling and beautiful, the photographs in this book raise profound questions about the place of artistic practice in zones of conflict.” - Yaarbal Books
