Connection to culture

By Sakshi Agrawal

Martika Shakoor connects with her culture through her photography.

“I focus on different elements of my culture and how I have experienced it by growing up in a different country,” she said.

A second-generation migrant, Martika was born in Australia, with her parents migrated from Afghanistan in 1984.

The Photography Studies College (PSC) student said: “One of my folios focused on the complexities behind being a second-generation migrant, the barriers you face, the sense of assimilation but also being isolated, the urge to belong somewhere and the playing between two different cultures.”

Having an interest in the documentary side of things and photojournalism, she also tries to base a lot of her work on her personal experience.

“I use that as a vehicle to represent the wider migrant population and their experience,” she said.

For Martika, photography has always been her interest but she did not pursue it until she completed her bachelor’s degree in arts with a major in international studies and a minor in human geography.

“I hesitated about it because I thought I won’t have a career, so I did my bachelor’s degree but then I just kept thinking about it. So, eventually I just enrolled. Now, I just can’t get out. It’s like once you start, you just can’t leave,” she said.

Martika is in the middle of the third year of her Advanced Diploma of Photography course at PSC.

She also works full-time as a paralegal support worker at an Aboriginal legal service.

“The course is amazing and it’s one of the main reasons I’m still here. The learning experience has been very different from anything else that I’ve studied,” she said.

“The tutors are very supportive and they are very real in the way they give you feedback. There are heaps of opportunities and you always get something to experience around the college.”