By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
Srinagar : Twenty-three-year old Sharafat Ali, a photojournalist from Srinagar, has brought laurels to the Valley by winning the prestigious Ian Parry Scholarship award for his work.
Ali started taking pictures in 2013 and was later mentored by Showkat Nanda, a documentary photographer from Kashmir.
“Since then my understanding and interest in photography have grown manifold,” said Ali.
Ali won the award for his photo project, “Who am I – Uncertain Identity”.
“Kashmir is often seen by many as a territorial dispute between South Asian nuclear rivals: India and Pakistan. But in the last 28 years, the humanitarian cost of the conflict has been extreme. Tens of thousands of people have died, thousands have been orphaned and around 8,000 people are missing. Sharafat shot these photographs in different areas of Kashmir over recent years. During this time, Kashmir witnessed some of the deadliest anti-India protests in the history of 28 years of the conflict. More than 100 children and teenagers died during 2016 alone. Sharafat’s work deals with conflict, politics, faith and daily life in the region,” the website reads.
He gives all the credit to his mentor Nanda who trained him as a professional photographer.
“A few years ago, there was nothing extraordinary about my photography until I met him and became his lifelong disciple. His mentorship completely transformed me and exposed me to a completely different world of photography,” he said.
Ali plans to tell some of the most important stories from Kashmir to the outside world. He plans to document Kashmir from the perspective of someone who has lived through this conflict.
“I don’t want to cover anything violent because that has been done extensively. I feel that the other aspects of Kashmir have remained undiscovered. So I plan to shoot the personal side of Kashmiri life. It includes how courageously people have been living their lives amid a deep sense of fear, threat and identity crisis,” he told TCN.
He is currently studying Visual Documentary Photography and wishes to make a career in photojournalism and documentary photography.
I an Parry was a photojournalist who died while on assignment for The Sunday Times during the Romanian revolution in 1989. He was just 24 years of age.
Aidan Sullivan, then pictures editor, and Ian’s friends and family created the Ian Parry Scholarship in order to build something positive from such a tragic death.
Each year, the foundation holds an international photographic competition for young photographers who are either attending a full-time photographic course or are under 24 years of age.