Shaheed / Witness / Kashmir

"Shaheed / Witness / Kashmir presents the work of nine photographers from Kashmir. These images were created between 1986-2016 in Indian controlled Kashmir, as its people found themselves pulled between the exhilaration of a struggle for freedom and the violence of its consequences. These images were first brought together in the photobook Witness (2017). The men who took these pictures had drifted – untrained – into photojournalism, and for the most part seen it as job, not an artistic practice. But to feed the insatiable appetites of the global hunger for images meant going out every-day, forced to look at their own world, and relentlessly pushed to engage with a story that in many ways was also about themselves." - Sanjay Kak

This comprehensive installation of work by nine photojournalists acts as a way to witness a conflict from afar which rages on after three decades in the Kashmir valley. This war has left at least 70,000 dead, 10,000 ‘missing’ and many more carrying trauma from torture, sexual violence and an oppressive military presence that has turned the region into one of the most militarised zones in the world.

In Arabic, Persian and Urdu, the word ‘witness’ translates as Shaheed, and in all three languages the word carries a second implication, that of ‘martyr’. These images carry that double-meaning and the space in-between, suggesting that to witness is also to offer oneself – here, to not only document a conflict for news media, but to confront it, often daily, and to live it.

Meraj Ud Din born 1959 in Srinagar, Kashmir
Lives and works in Srinagar

Javeed Shah born 1967 in Srinagar, Kashmir
Lives and works in Srinagar

Dar Yasin born 1973 in Srinagar, Kashmir
Lives and works in Srinagar

Javed Dar born 1975 in Anantnag, Kashmir
Lives and works in Srinagar, Kashmir

Altaf Qadri born 1976 in Srinagar, Kashmir
Lives and works in Srinagar

Sumit Dayal born 1981 in Srinagar, Kashmir
Lives and works in Kathmandu, Nepal and New Delhi, India

Showkat Nanda born 1982 in Baramulla, Kashmir
Lives and works in Baramulla

Syed Shahriyar born 1992 in Srinagar, Kashmir
Lives and works in Srinagar

Azaan Shah born 1997 in Srinagar, Kashmir
Lives and works in Srinagar

Sanjay Kak born 1958 in Pune, India
Lives and works in New Delhi, India