ABOUT SHY BRIDE VIDEO SERVICES
Shy Bride Video Services is a method-approach, artistic intervention between Paris, France, and Karachi, Pakistan, producing still and moving visual material.
By seeing marriage as a performance, performance is used to investigate marriage—
Shy Bride is an avant-garde, traditionally non-functional wedding videography company,
aimed at producing visual content of modern weddings using retro equipment, taking stylistic notes on kitsch from archival footage of South Asian weddings.Shy Bride explores the tensions between personal desire and public duty through the framework of marriage culture in Pakistan, and sees weddings as a third space. The intervention investigates the socioeconomic intricacies of the marriage system (exemplified by the business of wedding videography), as well as the visual culture history of marriage in the moving image. By investigating the place of marriage in social life in Pakistan, parallels are also drawn between club culture in the West and marriage culture in South Asia, that shine through the visual material produced by gatherings and shared spaces of entertainment.
The name pokes fun at the idea of a traditionally “shy” bride, ironically the centerpiece of the show. Weddings seemingly place the spotlight on the bride and groom through all the frills that go into the production. Are these celebrations for the consumption of society or for the romantic and personal enrichment of two individuals? Marriage is an industry, the shy bride its mascot.
Zahra Mansoor on the job, shooting a wedding in winter 2024, Nevy Housing Society, Karachi, Pakistan