Sowaibah Shahbaz (poetess, filmmaker and photographer)

​​I have always been interested in capturing the soul of life in my work. In the century I belong to there seems to be no value for the soul. For me the soul is the innermost truth about our ephemeral existence, living life more soulfully is the only form of immortality an individual can possess. This notion of the soul was introduced to me by poets residing in South Asia, that travelled from places like Samarkand and Azerbaijan to contemporary Pakistan and India during the tenth/eleventh century. While growing up in New York City the value I found common between this city and Lyallpur/Faisalabad (my birthplace), was that people were undaunted and lived with soul. Throughout my independent film and photojournalism practice, along with capturing plights of everyday life in the global south and west I aim to share something larger. The ability of a person to circumvent societal labels and assigned hierarchy through projecting their innermost power, that is granted from birth and that power is their soul. Something that can never be purchased.