Tariq Alexander Qaiser

THE END OF HOLOCENE: On Karachi’s Islands… For The Record, 2024

Born in 1961, Tariq Alexander Qaiser is an architect, poet and photographer whose work focuses on creating a conscious link between humans and nature. As the founder and principal architect of TAQ Associates, Qaiser highlights this relationship through the projects he works on, a testament to his childhood fascination with water bodies, trees, and how we interact with the world. As a filmmaker, photographer, and painter, his works have been exhibited in multiple solo and group exhibitions locally and nationally. He is the author of two bilingual books, Baltistan Apricot Bloom (2014) and Samandar Par (2017), which showcase prose, poetry, and photography in both Urdu and English.

Since the late nineties, Qaiser has been dedicated to restoring the mangroves of Bundal and Khiprianwala Islands in Korangi Creek, Karachi.  Mangroves are tropical trees that thrive in conditions most timber could never tolerate — salty coastal waters, and the interminable ebb and flow of the tide. With the ability to store vast amounts of carbon, mangrove forests are key weapons in the fight against climate change. They also provide both a crucial nursery for ocean fish and protection from tsunamis and storm surges, but they are under threat worldwide due to rapid urban development and population growth, as in the case of the Indus delta port city of Karachi. 

Frequenting and navigating the mangrove waterways on his boat, Qaiser’s obsession with this unique marine ecosystem turns into a photographic practice of archiving its beauty and human-caused degradation. Witnessing big age-old mangrove trees being cut down and shredded into pieces, and the slow death of its expansive root system and thus their habitat, Qaiser has created over 200 short films and distributed them weekly with accompanying notes as an open educational resource. THE END OF HOLOCENE: On Karachi’s Islands… For The Record is based on a decade and a half of recording and wanderings in the mangrove forests and Qaiser’s urgent advocacy for restoring this more-than-human community in our world.