Bangladesh Issue 100 Eyes magazine
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Note: Recently on line based 100 Eyes Magazine features some of Bangladeshi photographers works. Shahidul Alam (cover image) is the founder of the Drik Picture Library and the principal of Pathshala, the South Asian Institute for Photography. And another renowned photographer like
Munem Wasif, Andrew Biraj, Tanvir Ahmend, Abir Abdullah, Monirul Alam, Shehzad Noorani, Saiful Huq Omi, Khaled Hasan, Murtada Bulbul, Mohammad Rashad Kibria Palash, Azizur Rahim Peu.
About the 100 Eyes Magazine
100Eyes is edited, written designed and programmed by Andy Levin a photographer living in New Orleans, Louisiana. Levin is a former contributing photographer at Life Magazine and was a staff photographer from 1981-1986 at Black Star. In 2007 Levin was a finalist for the Eugene Smith Grant for Documentary Photography.
I discovered Bangladeshi photography in an unusual way. Like many people I spend too much time on Facebook, the social networking internet site that everyone seems addicted to. I have collected a large number of Facebook friends, many of them photographers from all over the world. Some I know and some I don’t After a few weeks on Facebook I started to get strange messages at the bottom of the screen popping up as live conversations, from photographers who wanted to talk. Some could barely type a word of English. They were awkward moments. I didn’t know what to say. It turned out that many of these little blips on my Facebook radar were from Bangladesh. This got me curious–there seemed to be quite a few photographers from Bangladesh. Checking the search engine Google for searches using the key words “photo magazine” by geographic location showed that the leading source of the searches were coming from Bangladesh. Amazing.
This issue of 100eyes shows a country as seen through the eyes of its own photographers.There is nothing remarkable about that, except in this case the country is one of the poorest nations in the world, known for being a subject for photojournalism rather than as a provider of photojournalists. Photographers flew into Bangadesh from New York, Paris, or London, that is, when they weren’t headed for nearby India. Photographers will still be flying to Bangladesh, including myself hopefully, but we won’t be alone. In 1989 Bangladesh was depicted for Western eyes in a famous essay by photographer Sebastio Salgado that presented the shipbreaking yards at Chittagong.
Twenty years later Bangladeshis are now behind the camera, and the results are stunning. One of the featured essays this month is “Breaking Ships, Broken Men,” an essay by Saiful Huq Omi that looks at the same shipbreaking yards that Salgado photographed. Instead of reducing the workers to so many ants on a giant steel ant hill, Huq addresses the horrific conditions that the men work and live under–while retaining the atmospherics that made Salgado’s work so compelling twenty years before. Its fabulous work.
If there is a message in the emergence of “indigenous photographers” it is that these photographers are able to achieve an intimacy with their subjects which enhances their humanity rather than objectifying and reducing the disadvantaged to stereotypical images of suffering. We are all too familiar with the pictures that accompany the campaigns of organizations responsible for feeding those who can not feed themselves. This imagery strips the impoverished of identity and renders the third world in one dimension– poor, and the result is more often than not that the poor stay that way.
As economically challenged as Bangladesh may be, there are 200 newspapers in the small country, and many of them are staffed by students from Pathshala, a school founded by Shahidul Alam, the central figure in the emergence of photography in Bangladesh, and the author of the cover image of this issue of 100Eyes. Alam developed into a photographer in Britain in the 1980’s after receiving a Doctorate in chemistry, and in 1989 started the Drik Picture Library and Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, the latter as part of a World Press Photo initiative. Most of the photographers showing work in this issue of 100Eyes went to Pathshala or taught there.
A traditional sanskrit world for “center of learning,” Pathshala, according to Alam is “‘far more than teaching photography. It is about using the language of images to bring about social change. It is about nurturing minds and encouraging critical thinking. It is about responsible citizenship.”
He contines, “In a land where textual literacy is low, it is about reaching out where words have failed. In a society where sleek advertising images construct our sense of values, studying at Pathshala is about challenging cultures of dominance.”
Alam and his fellow teachers, along with the World Press folks including Robert Pledge of Contact Press, have done a fantastic job. The students are exposed to classic photojournalism, poring over old issues of Life and National Geographic. Having spent hours going through the Drik archives I can testify to the training of the photographers– they always look for the single image that tells the whole story. I wondered to myself how there could be so many fortuitousy placed buildings in Bangladesh, as the Drik photographers seem able to find a high vantage point for every breaking news story. Abir Abdullah’s coverage of a horrific high rise fire in Dhaka, is as if he is almost one of the rescuers himself. Tanvir Ahmed is a very gifted photographer who seems able to move from news to features, and from color to black and white effortlessly. What can you say about Mumen Wasif? At 27 he is already working at the level of a Magnum photographer. I can’t say enough about all these photographers– they deserve attention and employment outside the confines of Bangladesh.
Inside Bangladesh the photographs carry the importance that Life Magazine stories had. And in a country where literacy is so low, as Shahidul Alam points out, “what better way than pictures” of gaining understanding?
Looking at Bangladesh through the haze of the internet imakes me nostalgic for the time when photojournalism mattered, When people opened their weekly copies of Life or Time Magazine and looked to photographers to show them what was happening in their country and the world. At that time it seemed as though photography could really make a difference– and that time was not that long ago. I was one of those photographers.
I get a similar sense when I look at the work of the Pathshala photographers– that their work is not just for the vacumn of the internet, meant only for other photographers to admire, or rendered “modern’ and fit only for curation and the gallery wall. Far from it, their work has relevance and a purpose within their own country, which may be underdeveloped in some ways, but seems progressive in others.
There are huge problems ahead for Bangladesh. Overpopulation, an enormous burden of poverty in mouths that the country itself can not feed, energy dependence, and the ravages of the monsoons combined with the floodwaters from the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, all these problems are facing a country with limited ability to develop on its own, But one thing is for certain– whatever happens in Bangladesh will be well photographed
–Andy Levin/New Orleans. Louisiana
Pathshala Graduation Day 2009
Noble laureate Prof Dr Muhammad Yunus has inaugurated a photography exhibition displaying a total 34 photographs taken by the Pathshala graduates at Drik Gallery at the same time a photo book titled ‘Perspectives’ was also launched at the ceremony with Prof Yunus unveiling its cover. He said the government should recognize photography as a branch of art as it is photography through which the meaning of life is communicated to people. Photography is one of the mosto importen medium through which Bangladesh is known to other parts of the world, said eminent photographer and Pathshala Principal Dr Shahidul Alam. August 2009 Dhaka © Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Allaha O Akbar
Islam Bangladesh August 2009. Allaha O Akbar- Copyright Monirul Alam
Solar Eclipse Watch
Bangladesh. July 2009.Dhaka. Partial Solar Eclipse watch in the Dhaka City. – Copyright ©Monirul Alam
Bangladesh. July 2009.Dhaka. Partial Solar Eclipse watch in the Dhaka City. – Copyright ©Monirul Alam
Bangladesh. July 2009.Dhaka. Partial Solar Eclipse watch in the Dhaka City. – Copyright ©Monirul Alam
Note: France based Tv channel Observers France24 published my photo feature to their online issue.Please see on
http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20090722-bangladeshi-way-watching-solar-eclipse
Midnight Dhaka
Bangladesh. July 2009.Dhaka.Kafrul.Midnight Dhaka – Copyright Monirul Alam
Mom and Baby’s Journey
Our new born baby Megh Munir has born in 1st July 2009 around 7.21 pm at Hitech Multicare Hospital in Kafrul area Dhaka city. As a father and photographer I took picture at his arriving time in our beautiful planet. At the same time I took his mother picture during her pregnancy. This is my self project which I recorded and I hope to continue and follow up their changing life. My project name is Mom & Baby’s Journey.
I was excited when my new born baby’s arriving in this world and my wife said she is really delighted and not to explain the real feelings. She said, I am actually excited my babies feeding time. I think this is really natural relation between Mom and Baby’s life. 1st July is the really happy days in our family. Dhaka July 2009 © Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Sensibility Objectified by Sarbari Roy
Indian renowned sculptor Sarbari Roy Choudhury’s exhibition title Sensibility Objectified is recently held at Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts. With a sculptural sensibility shaped by his early contacts with the masters of modern sculpture in the West, Sarbari Roy Choudhury is essentially a modeler in the best modernist tradition for which sculpture is the magical act of turning clay into flesh. And in this he is almost without a parallel among his contemporaries. Dhaka June 2009. © Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Monsoon Rain
The first monsoon rain is falling on the Buriganga River this year. The boat man taking shelter under the umbrella and observe the rain. Monsoon is the wind system that dominates the climate of South Asia and the area around the Indian Ocean. Washpur Ghat, Dhaka. June 2009. © Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
Trains Collide head-on
A rescue team removing the damage bogies of the train. Two express trains collide head-on just the outside Kamalapure Railway station leaving a man dead and six others injured. Station sources said when Mymensing-bound Isakhan express train was departing the station around 2.40pm; Mohanagar intercity train from Chittagong was approaching the station on the same lines. June 2009 Dhaka Bangladesh. © Monirul Alam
Photo:Monirul Alam
