Shot on Christmas Day in 1979, as a new migrant to London Rasheed was at a loose end with no family to celebrate with so he went to visit a friend and spent the day going round and round London on the circle line. The city was deserted, he recalled that in Karachi when there was a religious celebration or national holiday everyone came out on to the streets and the parks were full, in contrast everyone stays at home in London. This feeling of displacement and being alone in a new world is highlighted in this work.


Rasheed Araeen photographs his lonely
reflection in the windows of an empty Circle
Line train on a Christmas day in London. His
blurred efforts are thwarted by the variable
lighting of a moving train, and dominated by
his hands holding the camera.
What reflections of ourselves do we see in these
artists’ self-portraits?
Hammad Nasar