Ismail Hashim's Retrospect. - The two wheel transportation.

We all have a load to carry behind us, on our backs and some round our necks and throughout life we move around with this baggage for whatever purpose, for trade, for comfort, for lodging . for food primarily and for survival in general. Only today we have evolved  to find better ways less conspicuous and more dignified means of carrying our load and for those of us who can afford it we have someone else to carry it for us..

For the artist the daily act of transporting this load has more than just its utilitarian significance it is an aesthetic food for the soul. To have captured such a picture was ore than just a fluke or a cute thing to do it was taken with everything it  is concerned with; the human factor.

In the old days this was how fresh milk was transported and maybe still is today in some parts of the country. This means of transportation originated from India 

 The woven bamboo wicker basket is symbolic of how things were delivered fro one place to another carried on the back of a bicycle carrier. It was so practical and taken so much for granted that it was never thought of as anything but what it was made for. But to the artist it is something of a dying symbol, of a passing object that would soon vanish into antiquity, hence worth to record. 

Day in day out this man most probably load his carrier and make his route to carry out his trade and who would notice such a man but those who have the heart and soul that notices the mundane and is able to transform them into works of art.

As the ordinary man wathces history paddles itself into oblivion, the artist capture it and preserves the moment in time and space for eternity as whoever looks upon these pictures when they hang on the gallery walls  they will remember. 

The late photographer Ismail Hashim was a man who had simple ideas and saw beauty in simple things of life. He saw life through his lenses and  enjoyed what he saw as thought these were what made the world around him revolve..If anything else these black and Whites makes for good sketching subjects if one is into sketching

Each and every picture evokes a nostalgic feeling of connectedness of the old and the new.

"The Road is Long...with a many a winding turn...that leads us to who knows where.."

This how art comes into being, the sharing and the moving from one phase into another until the simple shot of an insignificant man pedaling his cycle becomes a piece of link between others and in this case my readers included.