Mir Arif Mahmood is interested in photographing people and places. He is known for his street photography, but his works are not in the journalistic vein one most often associates with street photography in Pakistan. His photographs are impressionistic and poetic with a haunting quality, a mixture of nostalgia, resignation, and indifference.
His subject matter is often the inhabitants of Karachi and their environment. Mehmood works in black in white and a large body of his work consists of portraits.