At The Mercy Of The River

by Shahidul Alam Posted on September 14, 2005 
http://www.newint.org/issue378/exposure.htm  swapan-nayak.jpg

'We are at the mercy of the river. Sometimes it spares us the agony of
shifting out. Sometimes it doesn't. But almost always it haunts us.'
Zoinuddin is a grizzled 70 years old. He is one of the people who live on
the temporary islands of the River Brahmaputra, which are constantly
flooded. I first met him when I was on an assignment for Outlook magazine. I
came back with enough pictures for my magazine. But I returned to the same
place a year later to photograph independently. It was then that I saw this
sunken boat being pulled out of the water. The immense labour put in by
these people to retrieve the boat struck me as the perfect symbol of their
daily struggle for survival. It was as if through this one picture I had
captured the essence of the lives of the people of the temporary islands of
the Brahmaputra.

Swapan Nayak, India

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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