About a year ago my mom, step dad and dog moved to Islamabad, Pakistan. When I visited Pakistan for the first time this past summer it was an experience that made me see in a completely different way. Everything was so different, yet at the same time, there was a comfort and familiarity with the country. When I returned to Pakistan this past Christmas, I began taking pictures of the people and the places that I saw, documenting my surroundings in a spontaneous and instinctive way. When I got back to Montreal and had the photos developed I found that there was a very specific colour pallet and atmosphere to the photos. The photos exuded the warmth of the sun, the dust in the breeze, the lusciousness of the land and the sweet and spicy smell of the air. They evoked the emotions that I feel towards the country and they perfectly depicted its essence. I think about Pakistan everyday that I am not there and I find that I am constantly searching for the people, atmosphere, landscape and colours of Pakistan in my daily life in Montreal. For this series I decided to take abstracted pictures in Montreal that try to capture my memory of the colours, smells, light and shapes of Pakistan. I have paired these abstract pictures with the photos that I took in Pakistan. This project explores the memory of a place and the senses that guide those memories.
