Pakistan is too often reduced to narratives of disaster and terrorism. This series proposes a more tender perspective on a complex country."Sehrabandi" (سہرا بندی) is a poetic and playful portrait of old Lahore through the prism of a vanishing tradition and the people who give life to the city.
A Sehra is a floral headdress grooms wear to ward off the evil eye and a poem in their honor. 'Sehrabandi' is the ceremony of tying a 'sehra' on a man.
Drawn to its visual beauty and social symbolism, I approached workers, shopkeepers, and inhabitants engaged in their daily tasks, inviting them into a moment of fiction within their reality, gently blurring the lines between traditional gender roles.
The veil of roses became both an honour and a concealment, a celebration and a surrender; in its vulnerability, it held reverence and restraint, beauty and burden.
What these images do not convey is the glorious fragrance of the roses.
Lahore, Pakistan, February 2025.