Sara Aridi: A bare-chested boy, fresh out of a lake, stands in a field of tall grass. Beads of water drip down his torso as he looks at the camera with a half smile.
On the surface, his portrait captures the simplicity of village life in Kashmir. But to the photographer, Mahtab Hussain, it means so much more. “Every time I look at it,” he said, “I think I could have been that boy swimming in that lake, instead of trying to hide from the racists when I was going back and forth from school.”
Mr. Hussain is referring to his childhood in Scotland, where his parents settled in Glasgow after emigrating separately from Pakistan in the 1960s and ’70s. His book, “Going Back Home to Where I Came From,” is a visual diary depicting the life he would have led had his parents never left. Its title refers to the xenophobic insult British strangers have hurled at him.
He harks back to his school days, when classmates asked him why he came to England, “even though I was born there.” That question of identity motivated him to create work on returning to his roots. In 2016, when he flew to Pakistan to conduct research for a residency, he ended up in his mother’s village in Kashmir’s Pakistani-controlled northwest region.
“My mom romanticized Kashmir so much, so it was almost like retracing her memory and the stories that she told me when I was a young boy,” he said. “It was an incredibly transformative experience.” He fell in love with the communal way of life and met relatives for the first time, some of whom are included in “Going Back Home.” More here.