Hanifa – Aggressive! Go getter! Fearless!

She was completely silent during my initial briefings and demos. Her face was so blank while I spoke that I used to look at her and doubt my ability to communicate. But she was stunning once she got her hands on to the camera. Her aggression can be seen in her images clearly. She would charge onto anything that caught her attention. She has gone right close to her subjects – even of they were people – and shot. There is intimacy of the offensive kind in her work. This transformation from a silent blank face to a charged soldier was quiet a surprise - a pleasant one. The results are there for all of us to see.

Nuzhat

This little one had everyone rolling on the floor often with her candid ways of seeing and dealing with world and life – and she was dead serious while she did that, so she hated it if we laughed. Too fragile as I thought she was to take on such a vigorous journey where we would be spending nearly 12 hours every day on the road, she did fall ill on the first day but as soon as she heard the talk of being sent back midway, she stopped puking at once and never ever complained no matter what. This display of strength was pleasantly shocking and comic in a way. She in fact teased other girls when they so much as even sneezed during the journey. Her picture taking was something to learn from. Even though she never got a chance to work with the big cameras (since the big girls kept them occupied) – she never lost her enthusiasm and went on with her little camera – running out of battery all the time. Every time she said “bhaiya, battery khatam ho gayi” … everyone would be laughing hard enough to make their stomachs hurt. She has made some classic but beautiful images.

Rabia – a silent one.

Deep thinker. Very sensitive. She had a mature keen eye and gentleness that shows in her images. She was very enthusiastic about it right from the first day. You could see that she felt at home with camera in her hand. I think she found her personal universe in it. She relished every moment of it. She got lost in it. She explored it. She found it. She kept on shooting till it was time to pack up. She had made some really beautiful, unexpected and mesmerizing images. I really, really hope that she finds the support and follows up with the art. This art could become her anchor, a window to the world; and she could bring a lot to it being a ‘female photographer from Kashmir'.

That's a promising designation already.

Sameerah – joy of life and purity personified.

No complications allowed here. She was smiling from the first moment we sat down to look at cameras. She never lost that smile through the journey. She shot like a poet. Photography for her was not craft, it was not technique, it was not an expedition; it was simply another thing to do in the journey of life. I wish I could have that kind of a mind. I thought she would shoot some very simple images but she brought back some really stunning compositions and content that I didn't know she was looking at. Wonderfully talented, I must say.