Taking viewers through a journey of colours

His journey of images began with cartoons, then on to poetry, prose and now to photographs add paintings-somewhere in between.

His journey of images began with cartoons, then on to poetry, prose and now to photographs add paintings —somewhere in between. Jaswant Zafar, an engineer in the Punjab State Electricity Board, through his photographs, which are on display at the Atmosphere Art gallery, takes the viewers through a journey of colours, images and self.

The exhibition, which was inaugurated by Charanjit Singh Atwal, Deputy Speaker, Lok Sabha, Zafar’s works have been described from excellent to telling pictures that force the viewers to stop and think.

Says Zafar, “These pictures are my journey which is spread over four years. In this journey, I have tried to break the boxes, the small compartments that we all have chosen for ourselves and prefer to live in them. My call is that let us all break out of these boxes and think with each other.”

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The engineer adds, “It would be too simple to say that all these are pictures of beautiful places for we all know how beautiful the Niagra Falls are or how magnificient our temples are. But then, my take is different. Let us try and see the unseen, hear the unheard, and feel what we all have not felt for so very long. Through my pictures I just want the people to stand and absorb the vibrations coming from them.”

It is not for the first time that Zafar is so vocal about what he feels so closely. While he takes a dig at the system and politicians around us through the cartoons that he has been drawing for so many years for various newspapers and magazines, his book on poetry, `Assin Nanak de kee lagde haan,’ which was released in the year 2001 not only brought a genre of poetry to the fore but also made people sit up and think. His latest work, “Sikh so khoj laye,” which is a collection of essays on Sikh history and Sikh Gurus is again a well-received book, which is presently a talking point of Sikh and the intellegensia world over.