Musings by Shahidul Alam
Multi-award winning Bangladeshi and South African photographers withdraw their work and participation in the Eretz Israel Museum showing of Prix Pictet’S touring exhibition ‘Hope’
Shahidul Alam and Gideon Mendel are available for interview and comment: shahidul@drik.net / info@gideonmendel.com
Continue reading “Shahidul Alam and Gideon Mendel withdraw from Tel Aviv show”At least seven workers were killed and dozens were shot after police opened fire at SS Power 1 Limited, a Chinese and Bangladeshi owned joint venture company. Workers demonstrating for unpaid wages and other benefits on the coal-fired power plant premises at Baroghona under Gandamara of Banshkhali in Chattogram on April 17.
Continue reading “Citizens Protest on Banshkhali Killings”Keeping in line with the month’s theme ‘Art as Witness’, MAP in association with the Bangalore International Centre (BIC), brought together two exemplary photographers of social action and change, Sebastião Salgado and Shahidul Alam, in a webinar hosted on 27 June. Moderated by Nathaniel Gaskell, the discussion centred on the photographic journeys of the acclaimed Brazilian and Bangladeshi photographers, and elaborated on the power of photography to catalyse social change. Through an unveiling of their personal journeys and experiences, the discussion also highlighted the positive influence of activism and the use of one’s voice against oppression.
“I was tasked with looking after him for 54 years. Now God has taken over that role” said writer Mushtaq Ahmed’s mother. A dignified woman, she spoke in a quiet controlled manner. Occasionally her voice would break, but she contained herself. Refusing to give in to grief. Mushtaq’s dad broke down more openly. He sobbed as he spoke of his children. Of Mushtaq’s farm, of his love of photography. Of Mushtaq’s sister who had been a student in the school my mother had founded. “Can I show you his camera?” he asked me. He gingerly brought over the DSLR camera with a 70-300 mm lens and placed it in front of me. Mushtaq’s wife Lipa, brought out the memory cards and the battery. They were placed in front of me on the dining table, almost as an offering. As I held the camera, Lipa quipped, “the camera was my shotin” (the other wife). “He loved it more than he loved me.”
https://www.channel4.com/news/photographer-shahidul-alam-on-life-in-bangladeshi-prison
Channel 4:
An acclaimed photographer who spent more than a hundred days in prison in Bangladesh claims he was tortured by security forces. Shahidul Alam was jailed after giving an interview in which he accused the Bangladeshi government of corruption and intimidation.
While behind bars, Mr Alam says he was blindfolded, shackled and threatened with waterboarding. Our Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson has been speaking to him.
I ALWAYS take a window seat on day flights. The ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign is my cue to peer into the watery landscape that the plane flies over before it lands in Dhaka. Few things give me more pleasure than the sound of the wheels touching land. This Antaeus-like effect only works on home soil. It’s knowing I’m back in Bangladesh which gives that warm inner feeling. Grounded in Dhaka for nearly a year due to COVID-19, I miss those landings.
As I sift through stories on international media, stories about Bangladesh are the ones I home in on. Sadly, they are often stories of natural disasters or the impending damage due to climate change. Stories about corruption, or our migrant workers being mistreated are sad, but as a journalist, these are stories I cannot avoid reading or reporting on. One hopes that by shedding light on such injustice, one can help shape a better future for my countryfolk. Some stories, like a cricket win, or a Pathshala student winning a major photography award bring a smile. A one-hour documentary on Bangladesh on Al Jazeera was a big deal. The trailer suggested it was a dark story, but still I waited eagerly.
‘THE TIDE WILL TURN’ By Shahidul Alam; edited by Vijay Prashad (Steidl). The eminent Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam was jailed for more than three months in 2018 for denouncing the repression of protesters. Released after a mobilization of local and foreign support, he reflects here on his prison experience and a life of fighting for justice (for laborers, survivors of gender violence, Indigenous groups, and others) through image and deed. Some of his finest pictures illustrate the text, as do his selections of noteworthy images by other Bangladeshi photographers. Solidarity and integrity reign, along with tenacious optimism, expressed in a heartfelt exchange of letters with the writer-activist Arundhati Roy. (Read about his current exhibition.)
I entered the giant graveyard. It was quiet except for my own footsteps but, in my head, I could hear the screams. Rows of blackened sewing machines, still in orderly lines, reinforced the sense that I was looking at tombstones. There were no flowers here. No epitaphs. No mourners.
A fire had raged through the Tazreen Fashions garment factory in Ashulia on 24 November 2012. Workers stationed on the building’s third and fourth floors had rushed to the exits, only to find them locked, a regular practice in many Bangladeshi garment factories. Fires and worker deaths were, sadly, all-too-common. The owners justified the locking of the doors as a ‘security measure’ but workers were effectively prisoners during working hours. As the heat and smoke built up, the panic-stricken labourers, who were unable to break down the iron gates, rushed to the windows and somehow managed to remove the metal grills. It was a long way down, but one by one they jumped. Some screamed with pain as they fell; others were silent. Each landed with a dull thud, their bodies crumpled on the uneven ground below. Possible death was still a better choice than certain death. And some did survive.
Continue reading “As Mujib Watches Helplessly”Alam is a renowned photojournalist and commenter, and the founder of the Bangladeshi multimedia training organization the Pathshala Media Institute and the Drik Picture Library Ltd. He also co-founded the photo agency Majority World and the Chobi Mela Festival, a pioneering photography festival in Bangladesh. His photographs of life in Bangladesh, as well as of protests and the environment, are well known in his country and around the world.
The boat was headed North from Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong island. It was 1986, and the big outflow of Bangladeshi migrants hadn’t really begun. The last thing I expected as I headed to Kowloon was Bangla being spoken. Curious, I approached the distinguished looking gentleman and introduced myself. I had been away for twelve years and didn’t even recognise the name Rafique Ul Haque. He didn’t let on that he was a celebrated lawyer, but I had enough wits around me to work out that a Bangladeshi lawyer meeting a client in Hong Kong, had to be rather good. It was much later that I found out that the man I had been speaking to was a class friend of the former president of India Pranab Mukherjee and had stayed at the same Baker Hostel in Kolkata where Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had been. I was on a judging assignment, and I introduced him to my fellow jury members, the Indian photographer Raghu Rai, the Malaysian photographer Eric Peris and Wee Beng Huat, the photo editor of the Singaporean Newspaper, The Straits Times. Neither of us knew then that he was a close family friend. His wife, Dr Farida Haque worked with my father professor Kazi Abul Monsur who was then director of the Public Health Institute. She was also his former student. Both Rafique Bhai’s family and mine were ‘doctor’ families. We had joked that had we become doctors we would have run out of patients in the family. Rafique Bhai had retained his familial leanings by establishing the Shishu Hospital, the Ad-Din Hospital and a cancer hospital that was close to completion when we last met. Having bequeathed all his property except the family home to these institutions, he had told his lawyer son, ‘I’ve given you a decent education. You earn your keep’.
Continue reading “Upholding the Moral Compass”