Mahtab Hussain was born and grew up in Glasgow, Scotland to immigrant parents from Azad Kashmir and Punjab, Pakistan in 1981, before relocating to Birmingham in 1987, where he suffered racist abuse growing up. After moving to London in 2002, and gaining both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in London and Nottingham, Hussain developed his career as a photographer from around 2008, his social documentary work often dealing with his own life experiences as a British-Asian man. His widely exhibited images of the British Asian community across Birmingham, Nottingham and London explore the cultural hybridity that has contributed to each individual’s expression of gender, identity, self-esteem and religion.
British social commentary photographer Mahtab Hussain was born in 1981 in Glasgow, Scotland to parents from Azad Kashmir and Punjab, Pakistan. In 1987 he moved with his family to Birmingham, England. Following his parents’ divorce, he spent two years living with his mother in the multicultural area of Handsworth, before moving with his father to Druids Heath, a predominantly white working-class area, where he often encountered brutal racism. After suffering from a decade of ‘physical and mental abuse’ at the hands of his father, he fled to Handsworth, at the age of 17, re-joining his mother who encouraged him to immerse himself within the Pakistani Muslim community. At the local Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College, however, Hussain faced accusations from his peers that he was ‘too British’. These identity clashes would inform his future work as he began to explore what it meant to navigate life as a British Asian man.
In 2002 Hussain moved to London to study History of Art at Goldsmiths College, specialising in Fine Art Photography, before completing an MA in Museum and Gallery Management at City University, London (2006–07). While working briefly at the National Portrait Gallery in London, he noted that little of the collection resonated with the Asian diasporic experience. In 2008 he returned to Birmingham and began shooting his You Get Me? series, based over a nine-year period in Birmingham, Nottingham and London. Comprising portraits of young, working-class British Asian men, it was created in a bid to combat the racist media portrayals that they often faced. In an interview with Its Nice That in 2017 Hussain said ‘I feel there is a lot said about Asian men but it never really comes from us directly, so I wanted to help change this’ (Bryony Stone interview). By using 16th and 17th century court portraits as inspiration, Hussain hoped he could elevate his sitters to the same stature (Mahtab Hussain, National Gallery Youtube Channel, 2020). You Get Me? refused to diminish the Britishness of its sitters, but instead explored the cultural hybridity that has contributed to each individual’s sense of masculinity, identity, self-esteem, and religion. The project concluded with an exhibition at Autograph ABP, London in 2017, and a publication in partnership with MACK and Arts Council England. Hussain’s sensitive documentation of the British Asian community is also echoed in his Quiet Town of Tipton project from 2015. In 2013 a bomb exploded outside the Kanzul Iman mosque in Tipton, near Birmingham. Police reported that had it exploded at the same time as Friday prayers it would have resulted in mass injuries, its timing meaning that a tragedy was avoided. Tipton, once at the forefront of the coal and iron mining industry, became a popular destination for young Pakistani men to settle. Hussain’s project intended to document the community in the wake of this attempted devastation.
In 2012, after being awarded an Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant, Hussain studied for an MA in Photography at Nottingham Trent University (2013) and afterwards, he completed a residency aboard the Ikon Gallery’s Slowboat, where, in 2016, he formulated The Auspicious Journey project as part of Black Country Voyages. This body of work explores the mass displacement of people from Kashmir following the building of the Mangla Dam across the Jhelum River between 1961 and 1967, destroying more than 280 villages. Hussain used the project to try and reach out to the Mangla Dam refugees, researching in Kashmir and photographing his surroundings. These photographs formed the basis of his next project, Going Back Home To Where I came From (2018), the title inspired by the slew of racist insults he received while growing up in South Birmingham. It documents the three-week trip to his mother’s rural hometown in Azad Kashmir. Intrigued to see what his life may have been like if his parents had not immigrated to the UK, he has commented, ‘For me, it was time to find out if I would have this sense of belonging, or find some sense of home for me in Kashmir’ (British Journal of Photography, 2018).
Hussain’s work explores British Asian identity from many different viewpoints. The series Honest With You (2017) commented on the fluctuating identity of British Muslim woman and the politics surrounding the veil, sexualisation, Westernisation and diaspora. Honest With You (like the earlier You Get Me series) revealed the struggle to maintain a balance between Western assimilation and traditional cultural values. As a second-generation immigrant, Hussain uses his work to explore the dichotomy between heritage and home and to question ideas surrounding a sense of belonging. Mahtab Hussain currently lives and works in London. His work is held in UK public collections, including Autograph ABP Collection and The New Art Gallery, Walsall.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Mahtab Hussain]
Publications related to [Mahtab Hussain] in the Ben Uri Library