-Profile- "Photographing the Life as It Is" : Rafique Sayed

-Profile-

Photographing the Life as it is

Rafique Sayed

Rafique Sayed is a photo artist who is known for his distinctive style of photography. He prefers black and white medium which according to him is the finest medium to portray the human emotions. The dramatic play of light and shades makes his pictures distinctive.

When he was a child, he was more interested in cricket. Pictures never attracted him. “Photographers were a non-entity, and the models were never more beautiful than my English teacher”, says Rafique. 

 Change in Time

“I came into professional photography more by chance than by choice”, tells Rafique. To excel became a matter of pride for him, and he chose fashion as his field of specialisation, which brought with name, fame, arrogance and the fine vision to him.

He adds further, “Beauty came to be defined as a perfect physical entity, not more, not less. Photography was: turning people into beautiful, baby doll images, expressionless, but beautiful. Lines of character – which, according to Audrey Hepburn, are lines of knowledge – started vanishing; if not by makeup and lighting, then, by the simple stroke of a mouse.”

He thinks, “After Almost twenty years, it all seems like history. For I awoke one morning, and unlike the great Dali, who used to think what the great man would do that morning, I found that I had nothing to do. I had an almost empty canvas before me, with very few pictures of fashion and beauty in one corner... the rest was as naked as truth.”

He refers to the words of Kahlil Gibran, “How mean am I when life gives me gold and I give you silver, and yet I deem myself generous.” These words have left a deep impact on his soul. He tries to discard the tag of fashion photographer, and for a change, have started shooting portraits of real people, nature, still life, even cars and hotels. “The more I put on my plate, the hungrier I become. My canvas is still empty. I need people to help me fill it up with creative, meaningful and out of the ordinary work. I want to give gold for gold”, concludes Sayed. 

--Dr. Pankaj Sharma