“My Silk Road” on display at library, opening reception planned
Special to The Pass Post
Dr. Syed at the San Diego Museum of Art
The Pass Christian Public Library and the Friends of the Pass Christian Library are sponsoring an opening reception on Tuesday, June 16 for “My Silk Road – Photographic Exhibit,” which will include a gallery talk by the photographer, Dr. Ishrat Syed.
The talk will be held at 6 p.m. in the Conference Room of the Pass Christian Public Library. “My Silk Road” will be on display from May 22 until September 16 during regular library hours.
Syed is a pediatric and general surgeon who resides in Long Beach. “My Silk Road – Photographic Exhibit” recently concluded a successful stint at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, India. Dr. Syed is also an author. He and pediatric surgeon Dr. Kalpana Swaminathan, have been writing together for over twenty years under the pen name “Kalpish Ratna.”
A Bactrian camel named Yasin at the ark in Bukhara
Dr. Syed says, for him, 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, whether from Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent or from Mumbai or Mandu or the Mississippi Gulf Coast, carries these layered engagements, asking not just to be seen, but read. Organizers say what viewers will encounter in the exhibition is not merely a series of photographs, but a way of being in the world – attentive, questioning and quietly resistant.
“The camera is just a handheld eye with none of the eye’s discretion,” says Syed. “What matters instead is perception – that fleeting instant shaped by everything the photographer has lived and felt. And then there is the journey itself. When you go looking for your own Silk Road, there are no maps – the road is the journey.”
This event is free and open to the public. The Pass Christian Public Library is located at 111 Hiern Avenue in Pass Christian. For more information, call the library at 228-452-4596.
