Shama Shams is a photographer and mixed media artist drawn to the slow, tactile nature of hand-made images. Her work begins with black-and-white film and darkroom printing, then moves beyond the photograph through experimental processes that embrace unpredictability and imperfection. Using photographic transfers, layering, paint, and texture, she disrupts and reimagines her images, allowing them to shift, fragment, and take on new forms.

Her mixed media practice is rooted in the idea that an image is not fixed. Faces blur, surfaces crack, and layers both conceal and reveal, echoing the way memory and identity are continually reshaped. Each piece carries traces of its original moment while evolving into something more abstract, more felt than seen.

For Shams, photography is less about capturing an image and more about presence. Her work honors what remains, what is fleeting, and what asks to be seen, not as it was, but as it is remembered and transformed.

Shama is a published author and a nonprofit executive.

Follow her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/sshams-cfre