Make It Look Real

“Make it look real,” the clients of a photo studio in Pakistan urge the photographer. They want a photo of themselves with girls, and preferably holding a gun or sitting on a motorcycle, even though they have none of these things. So their photos are pasted onto stock photos. In a sense, these studios are selling a lie, but at the same time the photos bring to light the dreams and ambitions of their clients.

Photojournalist and director Danial Shah focuses on the fake to reveal the real. While a photographer polishes away imperfections, they discuss why white skin is considered better than black. And amid the photoshopped images, the photographer shares his desire to flee the country, while he tells Shah about the genocide of the Hazaras.

One earns his living by making fake photos, the other sells realistic news photos to US newspapers such as The New York Times. Although the photographers and the filmmaker relate to reality in opposite ways, the boundaries between them begin to blur. They direct their cameras at each other and thus become the subject of each other’s work.