When the name Jahabar Sadiq is mentioned, most people will immediately think of one thing – the guy who runs The Malaysian Insider, a popular online Malaysian news portal. Well, that he certainly is, but he’s a lot more. Among his many passions and talents – photography.

Faces and Phases is an exhibition by Jahabar and R. Din, a talented but shy photographer, who chooses to otherwise remain anonymous. The exhibition showcases imagery taken from various places across the globe, some from right here in Malaysia, that essentially is a celebration of life, and the underlying beauty of the human experience.

In our opinion, the human experience is a multifarious culmination of people, places and moments in time. Perhaps no medium of expression conveys this experience quite the way photography does. As painter Francis Bacon once said, photography has the ability to present reality in a manner stronger than reality itself. Providing an ability to carefully include or exclude, to enhance or obscure selectively, all contribute towards making photography a powerful medium to convey feelings, ideas and incidences.

The exhibition has been curated by artist, interior designer and art curator Ria Johanna Waran. Ria curated Jahabar’s first solo exhibition in 2006 and another one in 2009 at the iconic RBS Bank building in Penang. She is originally from Finland but now lives in Malaysia.

Faces and Phases will begin its run on May 10, 2014 and continues until June 3, 2014. An opening reception will be held at 3pm, on Tuesday, May 13, 2014. Our guests of honor officiating the exhibition will be Datuk Faridah Begum and Professor C.M. Vickneswaran.

Faces and Phases – a sneak preview of works

 (click on slider to view image with details)

About The Photographers

(text provided courtesy of Jahabar Sadiq)

Jahabar Sadiq

Jahabar first picked up his mother’s camera, a rangefinder Canonet QL 35mm when he was 6 years old.

He was terrible with it.

Yet his fascination with cameras continued, although he started his career as a crime reporter and eventually went on to become a television news producer for Reuters Television, where it was all about videos.

He picked up a digital camera to record his work, travels and travails during this time – ranging from trips as far west as Afghanistan and as far east as Australia.

He has been snapping away for some 15 years now, or about three-fifths of his journalistic career. He usually snaps faces and, of course, places, where light exists, on digital cameras.

He shoots with an Olympus E-M5, a Fujifilm X100 and a little Minox Leica M3. And any of his smartphones or a film camera. He still keeps the Canonet QL.

Away from the camera, Jahabar Sadiq runs The Malaysian Insider, a news portal, and InciteMyTV, a just-launched video portal.

R. Din

R. Din is a shy but talented photographer with an eye for composition, colour and light, most likely due to a career in television years ago. Preferring to remain anonymous, R. Din began sharing photos through Instagram especially a trip to Morocco a few years back. Jahabar went through R. Din’s album and found several photos that showed much promise. Jahabar hopes R. Din will continue to shoot for years to come, preferably with a digital camera rather than just a smartphone for the next album.