The Scrapbook as Archive: Wahab Jaffer’s Documentation of Ahmed Parvez
The purpose of a scrapbook is documentary, where memories are preserved and organised through fragments. It is an inherently creative practice in the manner in which it is materially composed—cut-out, taped and glued, annotated (often by hand) or drawn around. The scrapbook need not be restricted to a predetermined order of time and place, it can be non-linear, discontinuous and even fictional. The location of the scrapbook within a larger archive (rather than as the archive) provides us with tools to interpret its content as well as understand the composer’s sense and vision for history.
This album presents a selection of pages (that I am reading as “images”) from the seven scrapbooks in Wahab Jaffer’s archive that he painstakingly put together of/for his friend and modern artist Ahmed Parvez. Jaffer is a Karachi-based businessman, collector and artist. His archive—spread over four decades—organises ephemera and documentation of the ecosystem centred on a community of artists, gallerists, writers, and collectors in Karachi, Pakistan, and extends to the wider South Asian region from the 1970s to mid-2000s. He collected correspondences and writings on, as well as documentation of, exhibitions and events of many artists whom he befriended. I was particularly drawn to his scrapbooks precisely because of the fact that they were his personal efforts—expressions of care and deep interest—as a friend.
Jaffer was a student of Parvez in the 1970s, after which they developed a close friendship, and Jaffer a life-long fascination for Parvez’s work. Parvez (1926–79) was a prominent painter from Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He situated his modernist vocabulary both within Pakistan and as part of much wider international circles, where he received critical acclaim. Jaffer’s scrapbooks of Parvez include newspaper clippings, exhibition ephemera such as invitations and pages from brochures, photographs of artworks, as well as personal documents such as passport and visa scans. A prominent element in the scrapbooks are portraits of Parvez, which are often signed by him for Jaffer. In these, we see how he is framed and seen by Jaffer—as several male modern artists of that time were internationally—brooding, at work or next to his work, cigarette in mouth. Parvez is presented as an artist (possibly viewed as a “genius”) decidedly in and of the modern world.
All images are scrapbooks from Wahab Jaffer’s archive. Images courtesy of the Wahab Jaffer Archive, Asia Art Archive. Materials in the Wahab Jaffer Archive belong to the Rangoonwala Trust in Karachi.
Click on the image to view the album
