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THE BEAUTY OF EVERYDAY THINGS

how the lens worked, how to zoom, about light and shade and angles. His father was very persistent, which put Rumi off. Rumi wasn't interested in photography because he felt he was just a kid. "That camera looked mighty complicated to me," recalls Rumi. Finally, the boy's disinterest sorely disappointed the father, and he stopped bothering Rumi.

Years later after high school, when Rumi joined the Teheran University of Fine Arts to study visual arts: cinema acting and directing, graphic design, painting, sculpting etc, all that his father had taught years earlier came to his aid. "Because, though I wasn't paying attention then, my sub-conscious had absorbed everything," says Rumi, who finally did his father proud when he held his first photography exhibition at BurJuman Centre in 2001. His beaming father flew down from Teheran for the exhibition.

Photographer, poet, musician, multi-talented Iranian artist Rumi recently held his second photography exhibition in Dubai. The occasion also marked the release of his first exclusive poetry and photography publication titled, Beauty of Nothing.

Rumi says he inherited the talent for photography from his father and for poetry from his mother. Like every child, he used to write essays as part of his schoolwork. But what spurred him to pen verses was the emotional crisis of puberty, the difficult period of leaving childhood behind and entering adulthood.

He wrote his first poem about 'loneliness'. Initially he wrote in Persian till he learnt English.

His poetry is deeply subjective, mostly dealing with his own consciousness, emotions, beliefs and views that he wants to share with readers. Before publication, he was giving readings of his poetry in Canada and in the UAE where he came in 2000.

"But music was always my own passion," says Rumi, who has been captivated by Persian music since childhood. Around the same time his father was pestering him to become a photographer, he began singing, and trying to copy various singers he listened to on the radio.

"For a strange reason, I liked my own voice, though others kept on shouting at me not to sing." Persisting, he later took lessons from a teacher who was a professor of music in the University of Teheran. From him, Rumi learnt the basics of singing, the breathing and vocal techniques.

When he came to Dubai, he met Glenn Perry, an American musician of the 80s who taught him about pop music and the techniques of pop singing. About two years back he started working on his first music album. He found a right team and finished the album in February.

He has written the lyrics of most of the songs. "The name of the album is Winning Card. The album's lead song is Gariba, meaning stranger. I have been asked to feature this song with an American band called Day One, which is locally famous in the US. I am also going to release it as a single, first in Persian and then English."

Rumi's recent exhibition featured about 35 of his best photographs that he shot over a period of three years in Dubai.

The photographs are distinctive for their sharp focus on details: a single leaf lying on the ground, the last dying moments of a fish in a basket, a can-opener piece throwing a shadow in the sun.

Says Rumi, "I never imagine what I am going to shoot. I get out of the house and start walking on the streets and observing life around me. And I start clicking. I walk in my jeans and t-shirt with a camera." He might shoot like 200 pictures on a day. It is only later that he analyses and critically looks at the pictures, and separates the good from the bad ones. And each photo, invariably, suggests a theme or a universal concept. Rumi says he has covered almost all the lanes and streets of Dubai on his photographic forays.

Explaining why he calls his collection Beauty of Nothing, he says, "We don't have landscapes or green forests here. And since there are no spectacular views, I started shooting ordinary, everyday things, which reflect reality or some aspect of reality. So, I tried to capture the beauty of these small things that one doesn't normally notice. So, 'nothing' is not meant to be in the nihilistic sense here, but in the sense that we consider life's every day things as trifle. I'm trying to capture the conceptual beauty of small things that we treat as nothing. Hence, Beauty of Nothing."

When asked what he seeks to express through his creations, Rumi says, "Everything has a reason for being here and there is an essential truth and beauty about everything — even an ordinary object. And I try to capture that truth and beauty through my creations."

Although Rumi's artistic career is poised to take off in other direction, with the release of his first album, he plans to keep up with his photography. Having done a course on film acting and directing, he says, "I do have a desire to direct short movies. So, with photography, it's like I'm preparing my thousand visions."