Rehan Qayoom Mir
Srinagar, Aug 09: A 74-year-old man from Srinagar has worked tirelessly for the past three decades to collect the ancient pictures to keep the cultural history of Kashmir alive amongst the modern generation.
The resident of Shivpora, was a government engineer, who retired as the Development Commissioner of the then PDD in 2008, Showkat Rashid Wani, has a unique passion for collecting vintage pictures from the last 30 years.
“This hobby of mine started when I had to shift from my old residence in Lal Bazar to Shivpora, Srinagar. The old property belonged to the ‘Wazirs’, and there were some vintage pictures, and I decided to collect them,” said Showkat Rashid while talking to the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO).
“After seeing the pictures, there was a picture of an old Baker (Kandur). That picture inspired me, and I decided to collect similar ones and create a vintage collection of unique photographs,” he said.
“Today, almost 30 years have passed since I started collecting these pictures. As of now, I have collected 16,873 pictures. We don’t have the original photographs with us, but we have the e-copies. We develop them later and add them to our collection,” he said.
“The thing that motivates me to collect these pictures is that I want to show future generations how our past was and how we used to go to school and do other stuff,” he said.
“We have different photographs from Jammu and Kashmir, and they are almost all vintage,” he said—(KNO)
