blogs
Feb 04 2012
Dead Pathans
Sometimes old postcards shock you with their relevancy. In this case, 100 year old images from the tribal areas of Pakistan bear a creepy similarity to today's imagery.Two examples suffice.Read more
John Burke in The New York Times
Some 130 years after his photographs of the Second Afghan War were made - among the earliest war photographs - John Burke's images inspired a modern photographer, Simon Norfolk, to visit Kabul and photograph today's signs of warfare.Read moreAn Arab Rennaissance
The recent events around an Arab spring prove that nothing is really dead. The impossible can happen. I noticed the postcard above of Algiers at a recent show in San Francisco, and thinking about the uprisings reminded me of the long tradition of Arabs working in India.Read more
John Burke in Kabul 2011
It is hard to believe, but some 130 years after John Burke became the first known photographer of Kabul, his photographs were on public display in the city. Thanks to the efforts of Simon Norfolk and the Tate Modern in London (where the same exhibit will open in May), Burke's photographs were shown at the Views of Kabul exhibition at the Queen's Palace at the Baghe Babur.Read moreAva Gardner in Lahore a Half-Century Ago
If a photograph can evoke a different era in Pakistan, then it might be this one of Ava Gardner in Lahore during the filming of Bhowani Junction (), based on the novel by John Masters.Read more
Granta Pakistan
It was so nice to see a Pakistan issue of the literary magazine Granta 112: Pakistan (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing) , but the result disappoints. With a few exceptions, this collection seems put together hurriedly, with little search for those compelling pieces of fiction that might illuminate the slow-motion collapse of this sixty year old nation.Read more
ayah
s. A native lady's-maid or nurse-maid. The word has been adopted into most of the Indian vernaculars in the forms āya or āyā, but it is really Portuguese (f. aia, 'a nurse, or governess'; m. aio, 'the governor of a young noble').