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Article 19

The Pakistani government’s restrictions on freedom of expression have often been exploited against different groups of people such as minorities, journalists, human rights activists, atheists, homosexuals, etc. Killings and attacks on journalists, media workers and human rights defenders remain endemic and characterized by ongoing impunity.

This story takes place in Lahore and constitutes a series of portraits of people whose way of thinking, living, loving, is against the official Pakistani narrative. People whose life is a fight because they have to hide their opinion, their beliefs or lack thereof, their sexuality, their art, their concerns, joys or sorrows. These images have been carefully staged to respect the safety and therefore the anonymity of the people pictured. Each of them is named ‘Noor’, a name that means light and is used indifferently for women and men.

PAKISTAN / Lahore / 2017 / Noor is an Ahmadi, which means that since childhood she has known that she needs to conceal this part of her identity in order to avoid verbal violence and discrimination against her and her family. She understood very early that she belonged to a persecuted minority. She used to skip school on the days when the chapter about Ahmadis was to be studied. The Ahmadiyya sect of Islam emerged from the Sunni tradition of Islam and its adherents believe in all the five pillars and articles of faith required of Muslims. Nevertheless most Pakistani Muslim considers Ahmadis as non-Muslims because they consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the movement, to be a prophet. Muslims consider Muhammad to be the last prophet and Ghulam Ahmad's messianic claims are considered blasphemy. For the five million Ahmadis, religious persecution has been particularly severe and systematic in Pakistan, which is the only state to have officially declared Ahmadis as non-Muslims. Pakistani laws prohibit the Ahmadis from identifying themselves as Muslims, and their freedom of religion has been curtailed by a series of ordinances, Acts and constitutional amendments. When applying for a Pakistani passport, Pakistanis are required to declare that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was an impostor prophet and his followers are non-Muslims. In 2008, Aamir Liaquat, a famous TV anchor, permitted a guest scholar on his show to declare Ahmadis liable to be killed due to the “blasphemous” nature of their faith. Within two days, two prominent Ahmadis were killed, one of them being a physician and another being a community leader. Noor is now in her thirties and is a successful independent professional woman. She is proud of her hard conquered freedom and likes reading, learning, dancing and carnal pleasures. She had once the opportunity to travel to a non-Muslim country in South-east Asia. For the first time in her life, she could wear a skirt and feel the tenderness of the wind on her legs
PAKISTAN / Lahore / 2017 / “I, the Native, the Muslim, the Gay, the Pakistani and finally the Artist. The perpetually angry man, refuting and relishing the fame and fear that comes with being reduced to a cliché. This is not a labor of love, but an inquisition of judgments and sweeping generalizations. Generalizations that stick to my skin like wet glue, a hundred men ejaculating their verdict all over me.” Noor is a gay visual artist and more recently has declared himself to be a muslim atheist. He lost his father at a young age, who was serving in the armed forces, to a skirmish in Baltistan, and was declared a “shaheed”. The word originates from the Quranic Arabic word meaning "witness" and is also used to denote a martyr. The word is used as an honorific for Muslims who have died fulfilling religious duties, especially those who die waging jihad, or historically in the military expansion of Islam. Within Islamic mythology a “shaheed” transcends death and cannot die. In Pakistan the word has acquired more nationalistic sentiments and is used to legitimize the deaths of its officers by portraying them as martyrs, and creating a mythology around them using religion and state sponsored propaganda. After the loss of his father, Noor was informed that there was no need to mourn his father, as he was still alive, a statement, which would later in his life, helps him come to terms with the faith he was born into. In his teenage years Noor became aware of his attraction towards other boys. He fell passionately in love with a much older man who would eventually lead him into a religious cult and was the beginning of a painful romance. These experiences which eventually allow Noor to formulate a personal identity construct. Noor had once written, “there is a deep anger inside of me and a fire,” which much like the burdens of his identities, he carries inside of himself with great pride. Noor pursued partial higher education in Europe with a thesis titled
PAKISTAN / Lahore / 2017 / Noor is a well-read, witty, sensitive, bright young woman. She is unmarried. She never accepted any proposal and is unlikely to ever do so. Her marriage would be based on a lie. She is an atheist and she knows that it is unconceivable to announce it. She has to pretend all the time. “I am like a ghost among others. I have to constantly hide who I am”. She hopes to leave Pakistan

Marylise Vigneau Selected for NEW VISIONS 2018

Marylise Vigneau (1968, Ambilly, France) raised in a conventional Parisian family.
Despite her fascination with literature, over time her mode of expression has become photography. Asia and cities struck by time and oblivion, development or isolation – often the two sides of the same phenomenon – are her favorite terrain. She likes to play with opposites; absence and presence, emptiness and fullness, loneliness and multitude, the very near and the far away.