Mahtab Hussain - Book & Exhibition Research

Whilst researching for my own photobook I decided to look for some influences. I had some across Mahtab Hussain’s work before and I loved his book ‘Going Back Home To Where I Came From’. After doing further research online I saw that the he had also turned the project into an exhibition in 2018 and there were photos from the exhibition so I looked through them for inspiration. I found the book whilst in the university library and instantly booked it out.

Mahtab’s book has a cloth bound cover and is 300mm X 245mm, which is a really interesting size as the book is so big that you can really look into the detail within the photos. One of my favourite things about the book was the paper type, it is silk stock with uncoated printed endpapers. I thought that the paper type really went with the photos and brought out the colours within them nicely. I emailed Mahtab last year asking him about his book and the sequencing. He told me that the thought process behind the sequencing was colour, texture and tones. He also said that he didn’t put any pressure on the meaning of each image.

The exhibition was held at The New Art Gallery in Walsall, between the dates of 25th May - 2nd September 2018. The placement of the photos at the exhibition seemed to be by colour theme. All of his images were framed in dark wooden frames and they were in various sizes and dimensions. Some were square and some rectangular. He had one of his images covering a whole wall and the floor of the gallery was a reflective black material. The floor could have just been the gallery flooring but I thought it went with the exhibition as a lot of Mahtab’s images had reflections or shadows in them.

Check out Mahtab’s work here: https://www.mahtabhussain.com/

Check out his exhibition here: https://thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk/exhibition/mahtab-hussain-going-back-home-to-where-i-came-from/