A motorcycle is an unlikely addition to an artist's equipment, but then idris ahmed is an artist with a difference. Using his bike and his camera to travel
remote landscapes and mindscapes, idris's photography takes you to a new plane. The playful joie de vivre of children on the snow covered slopes of spiti, the calm amid the cacophony of the kumbh, the brooding stillness of majestic mountains, the sheer power of stallions in full gallop, idris's camera brings us many stories...and if you look carefully enough, stories within stories. Each of idris's pictures is a personal paean to the spirit of freedom, harmony and to the power of life, lived in high places, remote, yet all too familiar, distant, yet at once banal. When not motorbiking across the mountains, idris lives in Delhi reading Ghalib and romancing the city through his viewfinder.
Daughter of the sea is an extraordinary journey through the landscape and mindscape of Spiti… as much mountain as seabed. Years ago, idris ahmed took a serendipitous detour into the valley during one of his motorbiking trips. Overawed by the stark landscape and the overwhelming warmth of its people, idris remained strangely drawn to the valley and its folk, choosing to return year after year and eventually, like a besotted lover, even giving up his fulltime teaching job to follow his passion. Biking beyond the Kunzum La into the valley for the first time, transported idris into a different world altogether. The stunning vistas that greeted him were almost unearthly in their pristine beauty. The sheer power of the high-velocity winds, the challenge of biking through boulder-strewn roads, dry river beds and shooting...