Becoming, belonging and vanishing : an (autobiographical) exploration of photo studios in Balochistan, Pakistan

Focusing on the world of photo studios in contemporary Balochistan (Pakistan), the present project enters the terrain of the vanishing. With the arrival of digital technology photo studios are disappearing and along with them also their hand painted backdrops, props, costumes and cameras, the long sessions, the chatting and the manuality that make up the social life of these environments. What is not disappearing, however, is the desire to transform life by means of photographs where individuals are allowed to enter a fanasy world. Photographic studios in Balochistan are spaces where dreams are born and lives are shaped. In a studio you can become anything, a freedom fighter, a friend of the prime minister, the boyfriend of a movie star. Photographs are not mere representations, they are tools for performing life, for becoming. The disappearance of the studios carries also a deeper social meaning. Photographic aesthetics are in fact key terrain around which local communities gather. They bring individual fantasies in touch with a sense of belonging to the local community. So what will happen once they disappear? The project builds on my practice as a photographer and documentary filmmaker as well on my own biography as a displaced artist from Quetta, Balochistan, lending my own story and my own self to become the object of the work of local photographers. My exploration of the world of vanishing photographic studios will allow me to further explore the meaning of photographs in a South Asian context. Doing this I will also address matters of race, ethnicity and gender as they meet and merge in the context of the studios. The project will result in a set of different outcomes whose three pillars are: an observational documentary, a web-based archive and an immersive installation. Regarding the latter, my aim is to create a virtual immersive space through which viewers can experience what it means to be photographed in a studio in Balochistan. In an impulse to prevent this world form fading away I plan to use of the same technology blamed for the disappearance of the studios (the digital) for the purpose of its preservation.