I visited Karachi, the port city of Pakistan, for the first time this year. I’ve been drawn to the country for 24 years — for probably the most unexpected reason one could have. 

When the internet first became a thing, I was in middle school. My friends and I would go to tiny internet cafés to explore the strange new world of music downloads, games, and something really new for us, the mIRC. We’d enter chat rooms based on interests — I was obsessed with Slash from Guns N’ Roses, so I’d find forums and chats about their songs. 

Somewhere in that vast web of anonymous usernames, I met a boy from Karachi. We were just kids, sending each other lyrics, talking about our lives, our families, the schools we went to, the people we liked. It was innocent and open. There was no fear or danger — just pure curiosity, connection, and hours of talking.

Most online friendships last a day. Ours lasted decades. I’d take photos with my dad’s little red film camera — snapshots of the lake in Ohrid, my friends, my walks — and send them to show him where I was from. We’d write to each other through every platform that emerged: mIRC, email, Facebook, Instagram. 

There were long pauses in our friendship, sometimes years, but somehow, we always found each other again, and I always had that faraway land at the back of my mind, finding it familiar in a way I can't really explain.

So when we reconnected — closer than ever — it felt natural to finally meet. To visit the city where he once sat as a 13-year-old, typing to his strange little pen pal from Macedonia. To walk the streets he once described. To try and understand, with my camera now digital and my heart still curious, the places that shaped the boy I used to write to. 

And that’s how this journey began — not as a political assignment, not as an ethnographic expedition — but as a landscape of friendship, memory, and emotional geography.

I visited Karachi, the port city of Pakistan, for the first time this year. I’d been drawn to the country for over two decades — for a reason that might sound unusual.

When I was in middle school, in the early days of the internet, I spent hours in smoky internet cafés exploring music, films, and forums. That’s where I stumbled into conversations with people from all over the world — and stayed in contact with a pen pal from Karachi. That’s how Pakistan left a mark. One conversation turned into many, and one city stuck in my mind. I was living in a lakeside town in Macedonia, using my father’s red film camera to take photos of my world — the streets, the quiet, the changing light — and sending them into the void. I remember the feeling of connection, the curiosity, the flow of words across platforms: mIRC, email, Facebook, Instagram.

There were years of silence, then years of exchange. And somehow, that distant city never left me. So this journey didn’t start with a project in mind. It wasn’t a commission or an assignment. It was something quieter — a desire to finally walk the streets I had once imagined, to see the texture of daily life, to witness the ordinary beauty of a place that felt familiar for reasons rooted in my childhood. What followed was a visual diary — fragments of marketplaces, street corners, seaside chaos. There’s no central story. Just light, sound, gestures, and the instinct to observe. A practice in noticing. A slow unfolding.

A sensory visual study of Karachi — capturing the rhythms of street life, textures of markets, beachside calm, and intimate public moments. This field diary isn’t about narrative; it’s about presence in place — seen through quiet observation, respect, and visual empathy. By focusing on atmosphere over story, it invites viewers into a lived, felt world.

Focus: roads, vehicles, construction, electricity lines — infrastructure.

• Feminist angle: women in motion, being present in shared space.

• Visual energy: lines, motion blur, layers.
  
  The streets are wires, dust, and neon. Movement is constant — cars, rickshaws, people crossing between chaos. There’s no central character here, only moments of geometry and tension. A tangle of cables. A woman crossing alone. A puddle reflecting the sky. These images ask nothing, but they show how much the body must navigate just to exist outside.

This Karachi field diary is a series of fragments — markets, beaches, streets — seen through the lens of rhythm and respect. There’s no single story, no fixed theme. Instead, it’s a quiet record of space, movement, and how people shape public life. While women appear rarely, their absence is part of the truth. This work was made carefully, in a city that offered beauty and boundaries in equal measure.

"Karachi, 2025 – A Story of Connection”

I visited Karachi, the sprawling port city of Pakistan, for the first time earlier this year. But the connection that brought me there had been building for over two decades — from the most unexpected place.

Back in middle school, when the internet was still a strange and thrilling frontier, my friends and I would crowd into small internet cafés to download music, play games, and dive into the chaotic world of mIRC chat rooms. I was obsessed with Guns N’ Roses, so I’d seek out forums and conversations about their songs.

Somewhere in that tangled web of anonymous usernames, I met a boy from Karachi. We were just kids — sending each other lyrics, talking about school, family, friendships. There was no danger, no pretension. Just curiosity. Just connection.

Most online friendships dissolve in a day. Ours lasted decades.

I’d send him photos I took with my dad’s red film camera — the lake in Ohrid, my friends, scenes from daily life. We stayed in touch through every platform that came and went: mIRC, email, Facebook, Instagram. Sometimes years passed without a word. But somehow, we always found our way back to each other.

So when we reconnected — closer than ever — it felt natural to finally meet. To visit the city where he once sat as a 13-year-old, typing to his strange pen pal from Macedonia. To walk the streets he used to describe. To see for myself what had shaped the boy who had become a man I thought I knew.

This journey wasn’t born from a political assignment or an ethnographic mission. It began in memory. In emotional geography. In the quiet intimacy of long-distance friendship that spanned half a lifetime.

2. BEACH: Escape + Contrast

• Focus: space, light, public leisure.

• Feminist angle: women reclaiming space, even if just sitting or walking.

• Visual energy: calm, contrast to street buzz.

• Ideal photos: women by the sea, family moments, footprints, dogs, breeze.

• Karachi’s beaches are wide, hazy, and heavy with salt. They offer a rare feeling of openness. Men dominate the scene — on horses, motorcycles, selling snacks. But here and there: softness. A couple feeding birds. A family walking toward the sea. Women are distant figures, but their presence matters. This is leisure in fragments — unspoken, still, and political in its own way.
  
  

Focus: color, chaos, textures, daily grind. Women working/selling = feminist angle.

• Visual energy: movement, density, human flow.

• Ideal photo types: women in stalls, closeups of hands, fabrics, produce.
  
  
  
  In the markets, the day begins with weight and color. People move quickly — hauling crates, shouting prices, weaving between carts and animals. Most women keep to the edges: selling fruit, cleaning stalls, passing through. These images don’t explain; they observe. The labor, the chaos, the daily survival — it's all visible if you stay long enough