MUMBAI: At first glance, Ishrat Syed appears to inhabit two distinct worlds\u2014of the precise and interventionist surgeon, and of the patient and receptive photographer. Yet in \u2018My Silk Road\u2019, his sixth exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery, these worlds converge into a singular, deeply attentive way of seeing.<\/p>\n
![\"Mumbai,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Mumbai--India---March-17--2026--Ishrat-Syed-photo-_1773774967893.jpg\" "\\"Mumbai,")
Mumbai, India – March 17, 2026: Ishrat Syed photo exhibition “My Silk Road” poses during HT interview at Jehangir Art Gallery, in Mumbai, India, on Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (Photo by Anshuman Poyrekar\/Hindustan Times) (Anshuman Poyrekar\/HT Photo)<\/p>\n
For Syed, the act of looking is inseparable from the act of care. His photographs are not merely visual records; they are sites where history, geography, sociology, anthropology and spirituality intersect. Each frame\u2014whether from Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent or from Mumbai or Mandu\u2014carries these layered engagements, asking not just to be seen, but read.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody has their own Silk Road to discover,\u201d he observes gently. His own journey began long before he set foot on these terrains. He travelled the world through books for years. What followed was a shift in medium rather than intent: \u201cI began reading with my camera. The Silk Road is the instant. The instant is the journey. The camera is my blink of discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
His is not a language of spectacle. It is the voice of someone wary of easy certainties.<\/p>\n
Walking through the exhibition, Syed does not so much explain the photographs as dwell within them. He pauses often, returning to certain images as if they continue to unfold. At one such photograph\u2014of the precise spot where Christopher Columbus first made landfall\u2014he lingers.<\/p>\n
What appears a serene landscape becomes, under his gaze is a site of immense historical violence. He speaks of the continent\u2019s tryst with loot, erasure and the systematic annihilation of indigenous people that followed. \u201cThe very foundation of America is genocide,\u201d he says. \u201cSomething it continues to aid and abet when not actively pursuing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cScars are memory anaesthetised,\u201d he says, returning to the image of a wounded 300-year-old oak tree in the Mississippi bay area whose branch was \u201camputated,\u201d though it was not in the way. \u201cThe official take is that the wound has healed well. But that\u2019s hardly the same as well healed.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a paediatric and general surgeon, he is familiar with the body\u2019s negotiation with injury. In his photographs, that knowledge extends outward\u2014to landscapes, ecosystems and histories that carry their wounds quietly.<\/p>\n
Even architecture becomes a site of inquiry. \u201cWhen is a wall not a wall? When it is fluid,\u201d he says, recalling the Ark at Bukhara. \u201cIt is like a veritable fortress\u2026 a memory vault.\u201d He recalls resisting entering it: \u201cThat\u2019d mean fragmenting its tidal narrative.\u201d The wall becomes a metaphor. \u201cStrange, isn\u2019t it, that we still don\u2019t see the futility of walls? Stranger still that we haven\u2019t yet noticed the irrelevance of otherisation and war.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all its philosophical resonance, his practice remains grounded in humility\u2014and scepticism about the age we inhabit. \u201cAny amount of advancement in technology will only make as much difference as the person behind the lens,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is estimated that over nine million images are captured on any given day, but how much of that is really worth documenting for posterity?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe camera is just a handheld eye with none of the eye\u2019s discretion,\u201d he adds. What matters instead is perception\u2014that fleeting instant shaped by everything the photographer has lived and felt. And then there is the journey itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go looking for your own Silk Road there are no maps,\u201d he says. \u201cThe road is the journey.\u201d He has himself experienced \u201clong cold nights with only the stars for company\u2026 deserts unrolling like carpets\u2026 a sarai to shelter for the night, to share a meal, to exchange a story.\u201d<\/p>\n
In many ways, this mirrors his long engagement with Bombay of yore\u2014a city he has photographed as a palimpsest. The same sensibility flows into his writing as \u2018Kalpish Ratna,\u2019 alongside his partner Kalpana Swaminathan, where image becomes inquiry.<\/p>\n
If there is a single thread that binds these practices, it is a deeply mindful gaze\u2014one that refuses indifference. \u201cThe Silk Road is my refuge from injustice,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
What viewers encounter in the exhibition is not merely a series of photographs, but a way of being in the world\u2014attentive, questioning, and quietly resistant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MUMBAI: At first glance, Ishrat Syed appears to inhabit two distinct worlds\u2014of the precise and interventionist surgeon, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,160818,61,60,160814,160816,160815,160817],"class_list":["post-353789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-historical-violence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ishrat-syed","tag-jehangir-art-gallery","tag-my-silk-road","tag-photography-exhibition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}