For years I’ve been a big fan of Rafeeq Mahmood, a Kurdish photographer whom his career spanned for almost 7 decades. with a marvellous repertoire of wondrous thousands pictures of his. This picture I found in my aunt’s archive (Shukria Mukerji) of a lady friend of hers named (Pakhshan Sitar) whom obviously was a pretty dame. The picture was given to my aunt as a souvenir from the lady herself. she wrote “My picture is a gift to my beloved and dear sister Shukria Mukerji, As a souvenir. I hope you never forget me.” Dated 28 February 1960. The Picture’s code is “4898” in Rafeeq Mahmood’s archive.
Even though it is a marvellous picture itself. After I showed it to my mother this morning, she said “Why don’t you colourize it?” She said so, because last year I colourized an old portrait of my father (Kamal Mukerji). So, I did! This is the result.
While I was on phone with my mother for about an hour, I asked her many questions about how her skin, hair and eyes colour looked like, while I was colourizing the picture, she confirmed of these colours so far.
Just for confirmations, I also called my aunt Shukria Mukerji to confirm the colours of her looks especially her eyes colours. So, the colours are more or less per my mother and my aunt’s memory of the lady.
