Chobi Mela III in 2nd Week

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I Will Not

Today on Earth Day we are celebrating by making promises

But I will not

I will not stop throwing paper on the ground.

I will not stop using plastic bags

I will not go to clean the beaches

I will not stop polluting

I will not do all these things because I am not polluting the world

It is the grown-ups who are dropping bombs

It is the grown-ups who have to stop

One bomb destroys more than all the paper & plastic that I can throw in
all my life

It is the grown-ups who should get together and talk to each other

They should solve problems and stop fighting and stop wars

They are making acid rain and a hole in the ozone layer

I will not listen to the grown-ups!

[Student of class five of Karachi High School on Earth Day 1991].

Other forms of resistance can be seen in the second week of Chobi Mela III, the biannual festival of photography in Asia. While the evening presentations (http://www.chobimela.org/schedule.htm), the workshops by Chris Yap, Barbara Stauss, Pedro Meyer, Rupert Grey, Dick Doughty, Morten Krokvold and Liz Wells, as well as some of the exhibitions are already over, Peter Fryer’s workshop is still ongoing, and Raghu Rai’s workshop is yet to start. Numerous exhibitions are also ongoing, including the open air shows at the Abahani Park, and the hugely popular mobile exhibitions traveling all over Dhaka.

Besides the Chobi mela website www.chobimela.org <http://www.chobimela.org/> where daily updates are available, those of you who couldn’t make it to Dhaka should look up Tay Kay Chin’s visual diary at www.eastpix.com <http://www.eastpix.com/> . As for the all night river cruise, sorry there are no substitutes.

Thanks to all the volunteers, the teams at Sketch, Ikon, Pathshala and Drik, the Prince Claus Fund, the partners, associate partners and the organizations who provided institutional support. Chobi Mela III could never have been realized without your active support.

Special thanks to Chris Yap for making the wonderful prints, Peter Bakker of TNT for getting Morten Krogvold’s exhibition over, Dr. Hashemi for providing the Entifadha posters, and NTV, Channel I and The New Nation for providing excellent media coverage. Thanks also to Rob White and his team at LCC for their brave try at video conferencing and Yutaka Ohira for his excellent work behind the scenes.

About Shahidul Alam

I am a Bangladeshi photographer, writer and activist with a special interest in education, new media and ICT. I was a research tutor at London University where I obtained a PhD in organic chemistry before taking up photography as a profession. I am a former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society and set up the award winning Drik Picture Library. I also set up the Bangladesh Photographic Institute and Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography and the DrikNews photo agency. I am the director of Chobi Mela the festival of photography in Asia. My work has been shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Royal Albert Hall in London, Le centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur. I have chaired the World Press Photo international jury. I am an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, a board member of the National Geographic Society and the Eugene Smith Foundation. I am currently visiting professor of photography at the University of Sunderland. I have lectured at Harvard, UCLA and Stanford universities in the USA, Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines and Universidade Eduaro Monldane in Mozambique and Oxford and Cambridge universities in the UK. I was one of the Masters in the Joop Swart Masterclass organised by World Press Photo. My new book “My Journey as a Witness” has been selected as one of the “Best Photo Books of 2011” by American Photo.
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