Punjab Information, Culture and Youth Affairs Department, Punjab Council of the Arts and Faisalabad Arts Council have organised a photographic exhibition "Photo Festival 2011" with the collaboration of Lahore Photo Journalists association at outside of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Auditorium. The photo festival was inaugurated by senior Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) leader Senator Parvaiz Rasheed.
Secretary Information, Culture and Youth Affairs department Punjab Muhyddin Ahmed Wani, Executive Director Punjab Council of the Arts Ghulam Mustafa, RD Faisalabad Arts Council Mian Attique, Organiser Lahore Photo Association Azhar Jafri and others were also present on the occasion.
Speaking to the ceremony, Senator Parvaiz Rasheed appreciated the efforts of the Information Department for organising such a useful and historic exhibition, which was depicting the soft image of Pakistan. He said that the Photo journalists visualised the different positive and worth seeing scenes through the eyes of their cameras and pictures in large size had been placed for the interest of the general public was a remarkable step of photo journalists. He said that the photo journalists had taken pictures of green fields, flying birds, village life and other aspects of the life from different angles and exposed the second side of Pakistan other than target killing and terrorism. He said that the exhibition such like this was very imperative and useful in the present scenario of the Pakistan for exposing the enlightened and positive face of Pakistan.
Senator Parvaiz Rasheed appreciated the creative qualities of photo journalists and said that the Punjab government would encourage such activities, which would create hope and positive aspects for the oppressed people of Pakistan. Earlier Organiser Azhar Jafri informed that photo festival was being organised in different phases and it would be held at Rawalpindi, Muree, Multan and other important city of Punjab after Faisalabad, while this exhibition had already been held at Lahore, which was very much liked by the general public. He said that 61 photos in 8x12 feet size had been placed in this exhibition on different topics, which would remain continue up to 4th September, 2011.
The photos by different photo journalists have been placed in the exhibition are included Nawaz Alam, Azhar Jafri, Waseem Niaz, Mohsan Raza, Muhammad Qureshi, Arif Ali, Tariq Hassan, Mansoor Ahmad, Tariq Saeed, Riaz Ahmad, Arif Najmi, Shehbaz Malik, Zahur ul Haq, Imran Mani, Rana Irfan, Umer Farooq, Murtaza Ali, Samual Bhatti, Tahir Chaudhry, Parvaiz Altaf, Naseer Raza, Umar shareed, Waseem Babar, Rafique Nasir, Waqar Babri, Sadaqat Mughal, Muhammad Kaleem, Irfan Chaudhry, Idrees Hassan Ejaz Sindhu and Hussain Ansar Chaudhry, Zubair Mahfuz and Shafiq Malik.