His overtly humanitarian concerns have often been to the detriment of his career; he once covered a violated woman with his jacket, resulting in a near brawl with another photographer who complained to Isaac that he had ruined his shot.
Many of the photographs are a visual prelude to the book The Vale of Kashmir, to be released this fall by W W Norton. They show off the strife-torn region in a new and unexpected light; the photographs reveal quiet, beautiful moments in Kashmiri life under a seemingly ominous fog (the late poet Agha Shahid Ali called this fog 'the sentence passed on our city'). Kashmir is shown to be unexpectedly peaceful, even if that peace is tenuous. A photograph of a flower vendor in a boat is particularly effecting: the flowers bloom in oranges and reds, a colorful point of focus in picture that is otherwise painted in dewy grays and blues.
Isaac's objective with his upcoming book was to show the hidden Kashmir; not the war-torn region, but the delicate and verdant land whose unmatched beauty has inspired artists and poets for generations.
Kashmir has long and famously been a place of conflict, the crux of which is summed up by author Art Davidson in the introduction to Isaac's upcoming book. But as Isaac travelled through the land, the mandate given to him by the Kashmiris was to show off their homeland's celebrated beauty. The sweeping sensuality of the pictures recall those of the late French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who also once celebrated the beauty of Kashmir in a series of photographs, and whose work Isaac greatly admires. In many ways, the photographs are the opposite of the typical sound bite on Kashmir: Isaac's Kashmir isn't a ravaged political quagmire but rather, a place of great natural beauty inhabited by a peace-loving populace for whom hope reigns supreme.
An image by John Isaac: A kingfisher poses proudly with the catch of the day.
Also see: Encounter cops: Controversy's Children
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