No Land For a Fisherman
Inkjet on photo rag
66.6×100 cm
2012
Unavailable
No Land For a Fisherman is collection of six photographs, which were taken during my stay in an old fishermen’s settlement.
While living there, I realized that fishing was a profession that did not exist anymore as it once used to. However, I felt that it still continues to survive on another plane of existence: you can still feel the people who partook in it, and lived as parts of the profession itself. The work, then, is intended to be a response to the memory of the profession.
I resolved to create not only a very personal landscape of the fishermen for my work, but also to develop a counter dialogue. For this purpose, I decided to stay in an old fisherman’s home for a few days while he was away. During my stay I ventured to open some of his most personal things, and photograph them. I did not tinker with anything I opened: I photographed everything just as I had found them.
My work is intended to show that while there might be no land for fishermen, they do not really need a land of their own, as fishermen.
Basir Mahmood (b. 1985 Lahore, Pakistan) studied in Lahore at the Beaconhouse National University, and received a yearlong fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2011. In order to engage with situations around him, he ponders upon embedded social and historical terrains of the ordinary, as well as his personal milieu. Using video, film or photograph, Mahmood weaves various threads of thoughts, findings and insights into poetic sequences and various forms of narratives. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and has recently been awarded at 18th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil Prize 2013, São Paulo, Brazil.
Image Courtesy | Basir Mahmood Studio