From Art Radar Journal

BANGLADESH PHOTOGRAPHY LONDON GALLERY SHOW

The first UK retrospective of works by internationally renowned Bangladeshi photographer and social activist Shahidul Alam is on at London’s Wilmotte Gallery until December 2011. Art Radar brings you a selection of portraits and accompanying wall texts from the exhibition.

Click here to read more about the artist and the exhibition, called “Shahidul Alam: My Journey as a Witness”, on Wilmotte Gallery’s website.

‘Nurjahan’s father’ (portrait), Chatokchora, Sylhet, Bangladesh, 1994. © Shahidul Alam.

‘Ali Zaman’ (portrait), Chakkar Bazaar, Kashmir, Pakistan, 2005. © Shahidul Alam.

‘Horipodo’ (portrait), Shondeep, Bangladesh, 1991. © Shahidul Alam.

‘Ship breaking worker’ (portrait), Rahman Yard, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2008. © Shahidul Alam.

‘Hemayetpur peep hole’ (portrait), Hemayetpur, Pabna, Bangladesh, 1994. © Shahidul Alam.

‘Champa: Naxalite series’ (portrait), Jessore, Bangladesh, 1994. © Shahidul Alam.

‘Girl in wheat field’ (portrait), Bangladesh, 1997. © Shahidul Alam.

My first break came when an Irish NGO, CONCERN, wanted me to cover their activities in northwest Bangladesh. I went to Pabna on the back of a motorbike and crossed the paddy fields. There were no studios, large formats, or Polaroids. I was taking pictures of people being themselves. We talked, we laughed, and we made friends. It was close to dusk when I saw a girl looking at me. She wanted to be photographed and when I raised my lens a broad smile eclipsed her face. Light had fallen and the shallow depth of field had more to do with the conditions than any pre-planned, unfocused background. Again I knew what the print would look like. My predictions worked. This simple photograph is still one of my favourites.

Shahidul Alam

‘Blind boy’ (portrait), Gaforgaon, Mymensingh, Bangladesh, 1988. © Shahidul Alam.

After years of playing Pied Piper with a camera, I am still taken aback by children insisting on being photographed. It was September 1988 and the floods were merciless. I met some children in Gaforgaon, Mymensingh. They had not eaten for three days. A torn sari, strung across the beams of an abandoned warehouse, was the only semblance of shelter. Their homes were washed away and family members had died. And yet the children surrounding me wanted a picture.

The place was dark, but the walls yielded to the monsoon light and a little group jostled into position. Just as I was pressing the shutter I realised the boy in the middle was blind. He had edged his way into the centre and though he was not tall he stood with a beaming smile.

I have never seen that boy again and today I question the fact that I didn’t ask his name. But he has never left my thoughts and often I wonder why it was so important for him to be photographed. It has happened elsewhere; in boat crossings, paddy fields laden with grain, and chaotic marketplaces. In these and so many other situations a shangbadik (literally a journalist, but effectively anyone with a half decent camera) is hugely in demand. They refuse to take my fare at the ferry ghats. They open their hearts, spill out their secrets, and pass on their dreams. Why did a photo mean so much to a blind child?

Shahidul Alam

The exhibition, called “Shahidul Alam: My Journey as a Witness”, will continue on its international tour in 2012 and follows on from the publication of a book of Alam’s work released in September 2011. The book, also calledShahidul Alam: My Journey as a Witness, was put together by the photographer in collaboration with art writer and curator Rosa Maria Falvo, who is also the international commissions editor for the book’s publisher, Skira.

Skira has kindly supplied Art Radar with a copy of Shahidul Alam: My Journey as a Witness to give away to one lucky reader. Stop back here next week to read an excerpt from Falvo’s introduction to the book and to find out more about how you can win a copy.

KN/HH

Related Topics: Bangladeshi artists, photography, gallery shows, picture feasts

Chobi Mela VI 2011

First of all, I would like to thank all 26 of the students in this workshop for being willing to undertake hard labor and endure pressure to push limits, break boundaries and grow. If have been critical in the beginning, it was because of my own passionate belief that they could succeed at a level they might not themselves imagine. I feel a responsibility to give them this opportunity to concentrate on what is most important, and to discover the joy in that hard, demanding work.

I am very happy that they now understand that photography is about self-discovery. I am pleased, and they should be pleased, about this wonderful work. This is their moment, and they should enjoy every bit of it.

A special thanks to Shehab, who has been very important in helping this to succeed.

Morten Krogvold
January 2011



To Debasish Shom, photography is the interpretation of a state of mind. He believes the physiological and emotional thoughts of the mind influence images greatly, and photographs act as a medium to unravel and express these thoughts.

A Bangladeshi photographer, Debasish Shom is a graduate from Pathshala South Asian Media Academy. Since childhood, Shom has always felt the need for a medium to aptly convey his emotions. When he graduated from university, he began taking interest in pictures and got admitted to Pathshala. Unlike many who have grown up with photographs, Shom’s first exposure of the art came through the institution.

Debashish Shom second from left at the special opening of four exhibitions at Drik 0n 23 January 2001. With him are (from Left to right) artist David de Souza, Chief Guest Kushi Kabir, Festival Director Shahidul Alam and artist Munem Wasif. Photograph Chulie de Silva

Soon, photographs and stories were beginning to take shape. His exhibition  at Chobi Mela VI, “Dhaka: My Dreams, My Reality” at the Drik Open Air Gallery is on till 3 February 2011.  It embodies the psychosomatic war between his dreams and reality. He portrays how a person under the influence of drugs perceives his space in the bustling city of the rat race. There is a sense of isolation, illusion, depression and emptiness everywhere that largely contradicts what one knows Dhaka city to be.

“When I photograph, I always try to redefine my space. What is seen and experienced is reconstructed and a contradiction created. That is how I feel I am most involved with space and matter.”

From the exhibition Dhaka My Dreams, My Reality by Debashish Shom

The exhibit encapsulates complex struggles into simple photographs that strike the viewers almost instantaneously. They are powerful and potent, providing an indiscreet insight into undiscovered realities. To interpret the mind’s transition and turmoil is exciting and difficult at the same time, and Shom has rather effortlessly captured it in his frames.

Shom has held exhibitions at Drik Gallery Bangladesh and Kiyosato Museum of Arts in Japan. His work was also showcased in Chobi Mela IV. As a successful artist, would Shom recommend a career in photography to others?

“If someone is passionate, I believe a career can be built through photography. There is a lot of opportunity in commercial photography that can be approached alongside documentary photography. I only speak from my experiences, and I still believe I can make it as a photographer. However, it is important rethink carefully before making up one’s mind in this field. There is a lot of hard work involved.”

With the rampant growth of digital technology, the field of photography has become increasingly competitive over the past few years. There are more people taking pictures now.

“I think it’s great so many people are taking pictures. It makes them value pictures. Photographs then become significant in their lives and they can appreciate the art better.”

Debasish Shom currently works for CANVAS – a fashion and lifestyle magazine.

——–

About Sabhanaz Rashid Diya

I’m a cranky, over-excited and lazy 18-year-old. I can suddenly “spark out” creativity and sleep non-stop for 12 hours. I also am frustrated (and in good moods, amused) by my own life. You can know more about me at 18forlife.wordpress.com

View all posts by Sabhanaz Rashid Diya →

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Chris Riley

From the Chobi Mela VI Exhibition “Girl Who Fell to Earth by Joanna Petrie.

A trip to The British Council to see work by Gareth Phillips and Joanna Pettrie turned into a haunting journey into the macabre side of our, ok, my, dreamworld.

From the Chobi Mela VI Exhibition “Existence” by Gareth Phillips
While Phillips showed images from a hospice, Petrie showed work from her own shadow world. She talked gently about her task of bringing half experienced dreams into reality through staged photographs in a Lancashire quarry. Your humble correspondent is from Lancashire and was startled to find the images familiar and also meaningful in the context of Lancashire’s history as being a notorious home of witches and the occult. The Witches of Pendle, 12 of them, were executed in the mid eighteenth century in the biggest witch trials in English history. The hangings took place a few miles away from Joanna Petrie’s location for her work. A coincidence? I looked at the work again and again … and invite you to come to your own conclusion.

Robert Pledge, President Contact Press Images. Photograph Chris Riley

Chobi Mela VI evening presentations at the Goethe Institut continued with a historical presentation by Robert Pledge of work by David Burnett, also showing at Drik. Having had a conversation about archives only a few days ago it was delicious to be sucked into this history. As far as I can tell, Robert’s selection of 100 Burnett images from John F Kennedy to Barack Obama by way of the Olympics and what seemed like a permanent war somewhere, was a helter skelter descent into the abyss of recent history. Punctuated by athletic prowess and the dawn of the space age it was a depressing and gorgeous presentation. Images of Burnett himself told a tale of technology, reducing in size increasing in power but seemingly decreasing in influence. Not that the work decreased in power, it was a spell binding slice of an American photographers sense of the real.

Which, of course, is the point. This archive is the archive of an American and as such reflects the world he created through the art of photography. I was personally stunned at how accurately it reflected my own sense of it all. Then again, he created that sense in no small way. Pledge also entered into a friendly spat with Pedro Meyer about photography before the shot and after the shot for an audience of photoshopping multimedia artists. Interesting.

Multimedia slideshows seem to be evolving the art of photography itself. There were several good ones at Chobi Mela. The story telling skills of the photographic mind are not the same as film makers. If film is the art of time then photography, being the art of light, is about being still, even when presented as slide show multimedia.

In one show computerized voices drifted across everyday Japanese artifacts and rooms creating a spectral presence of the banal which in it creating its own beauty destroyed the social asphyxia it represented. A mix of stills and very short form video added to the disturbance of a piece about the sexual objectification of, well, objects. The slide show as art form is here. Its very good. I would like this on an iPad.

The brilliance of Chobi Mela persistently emerges as a near contact sport between the past and the future, old and young. The best of this was to come: Under the expert tuition and mentorship of Morten Krogvold the students of Chobi Mela produced a stunning show of staggering genius. Old hands were left “jealous” of a body of work that made the sublime out of the tension between the telling of a hopeful elevating story and the context of a sometimes hopeless situation: Dhaka itself. The city is its people, fifteen million of them living in an urban environment that redefines the idea of mismanagement. It was the people of the city that the students brought into the show.Yet the predictable images, those that dominate a western view of the world, a view that would focus on the squalid, the decayed and the hopelessness, were totally absent. Instead it was a euphoria of images that told of life and love, of death as life and of the sheer bloody brilliance of the human spirit. It is a body of work that is as unified as it is diverse, representing the innocence of young artists and the seriousness of their intent. Sure, they had been whipped into shape by their frustrated teacher but the whipping had been to a frenzy of creativity, personal, explicit and powerful. It was a joy to behold and, for me, the thrill of Chobi Mela. All the exhibitions of work are carefully curated and thought through. The talent is indeed international. But all of it is a background and stimulant for what is actually created here in Dhaka by an international group of students from far and wide. It is a hint of a future Dhaka, a city of light that is beginning to attract the storytellers of future history.

Shahidul Alam in an interview with New Age

by Rahnuma Ahmed

Media reports on “Crossfire” exhibition

Latest report in Indepndent

Shahidul Alam’s exhibition, ‘Crossfire’ (a euphemism for extrajudicial killings by the Rapid Action Battalion), was scheduled to open on March 22, at Drik Gallery, Dhaka. A police lockup of Drik’s premises before the opening prevented noted Indian writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi from entering, forcing her to declare the opening on the street outside Drik. The police blockage was removed soon after Drik’s lawyers served legal notice and the lawyers had moved the Court, and after Government lawyers i.e., the Attorney Generals office, had contacted the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s office, and the Home Ministry, during the hearing on the government. The court commented that even after repeated rules had been issued on the government, crossfire had continued to occur. The court’s response and subsequent events enabled Drik to open the exhibition for public viewing on March 31.

Shahidul Alam in front of a collage, part of his Crossfire exhibition. Cartoon in the background of Home Minister Sahara Khatun, ‘No crossfire killing taken place’. — Wahid Adnan/DrikNEWS

You work in the documentary genre, this work is show-cased as being symbolic, interpretive. Does this mean a change in genres?

I find these categorisations problematic. I see myself as a storyteller. There’s fiction and non-fiction. This is clearly non-fiction, though it draws upon many of the techniques that fiction would use. The allegorical approach was deliberately chosen as I felt it had, in this instance, greater interpretive potential than the literal approach. Quite apart from the fact that one could hardly expect RAB to allow photographers to document their killing (they do sometimes have TV crews accompanying them on ‘missions’ but they are never allowed to be there during ‘crossfire’), I felt that showing bodies, blood and weapons would not add to the understanding people already had. We are not dealing with lack of knowledge. ‘Crossfire’ is known and, in fact, it is because it is known that the exhibition is seen as such a threat. So, while reinforcing the known with images would have a value, it would be unlikely to be as provocative as these more subtle but haunting images are likely to be.

I wanted the images to linger in people’s minds, perhaps to haunt them. They are desolate images, quiet but suggestive. The attempt is not one of inundating the audience with information, but leaving them to meditate upon the silence of the dead.

Crossfire deaths continue despite regime changes. How do you view this?

Criminals have survived because of patronage of the powerful. The removal of criminals, through ‘crossfire’, does not affect the system of control, but merely substitutes existing criminals for new ones. This is why crimes continue unabated under RAB. All it does is to undermine the legal system. Unless serious attempts are made to remove such patronage and, better still, catch the godfathers, the extermination of thugs and local-level criminals (and many innocent people are also killed) will have no effect on crime. The ruling elite knows this. So why use RAB at all? I believe it is to keep control. Dead criminals don’t speak. Don’t give secrets away. Don’t take a share of the spoils. They are disposable, and RAB is the disposal system.

Every government has used RAB and other law enforcement authorities to remove troublemakers. Bangla Bhai had become a liability when he was apprehended. He didn’t die in crossfire, but was hurriedly hanged all the same despite the fact that he wanted to talk to the media as he had ‘stories to tell’. Dead people don’t tell stories. So, all governments would rather have RAB, to clean up their mess, than be confronted by their own shadows.

A change of government does not change this structure.

The inclusion of the Google map has turned this exhibition into a collective, history-writing project. Why that added dimension?

Art projects are generally about the glorification of the artist. The audience is generally a passive recipient. I see this as a public project. I have a role to play as a storyteller, but my work is informed by not only the collective work of my co-researchers, but also that of human rights groups, other activists, and most importantly by the lives, or deaths, of the people whose stories are being told. The survivors, the witnesses and others affected by these deaths are important players in this story and it was essential to find a way to make this project inclusive. I would be kidding myself if I assumed this show would put an end to extrajudicial killings. I also believe there are still many unreported cases.

The Google map has the twin benefits of being interactive and open. We have already been told of one person who had been crossfired but his name hadn’t come up in the archival research.

The internet will also allow a much wider participation than might otherwise have been possible.

Besides the Awami League’s electoral pledge of stopping extrajudicial killings, it had also promised us a ‘digital Bangladesh’. I think it is appropriate that this digital Bangladesh be claimed by the people.

What is the significance of research—in the sense of dates, names, places, events—for this project, and for the exhibition?

The assumed veracity of the photographic image is an important source of the strength of this exhibition. We have deliberately moved away from the mechanical aspect of recording events through images, but supplemented it by relating the image to verifiable facts. Meticulous research has gone into not only providing the context for the photographs, which has been included in the Google map, but each image, in some way, refers to a visual inspired by a case study. By deliberately retaining some ambiguity about the ‘facts’ surrounding the image, we invite the viewer to delve deeper into the image to discover the physical basis of the analogy, and to reflect upon the image. The photographs therefore become a portal through which the viewer can enter the story, rather than the story in itself. Yet, each image, relates to a finite, physical instance, that becomes a reference point for a life that was brutally taken away.

Your exhibition is political, with a capital ‘P’. Why is political engagement generally not seen in the work of Bangladeshi artists?

Art cannot be dissociated from life, and life is distinctly political. To paraphrase the renowned Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, the price of tomato is political. However, life is also nuanced and multi-layered. Our art practice needs to be critically engaged at all levels. While the war of liberation is understandably a source of inspiration for many artists, there are many other wars of contemporary life that seem to slip from the artist’s canvas. Most artists, with some exceptions of course, claim they produce art merely for themselves. I don’t believe them. Of course there is great joy in producing art that pleases oneself. But I believe art is the medium and not the message, and all artists, I suspect, want their art to have an effect.

I know it is passé in some quarters to be producing art that is political. Being apolitical is a political stance too. While I can understand schools of thought that have rebelled against the traditional trappings of art, I do not see the point of producing art that is not meaningful. Strong art is capable of engaging with people. It is that engagement that I seek. My art is merely a tool towards that engagement.

I understand what you mean. A lot of the artwork that’s being produced in Bangladesh stems from commercial interests. Producing formulaic work that sells is the job of a technician and not an artist. Sure, an artist needs to survive and we all produce work which we hope might sell, but once that becomes the sole purpose of producing art, one is probably not an artist in the first place.

There is a strong adherence in Bangladesh to an antiquated form of pictorialism. This applies both to representational and abstract art. Ideas seem to take back stage. While I’m wary of pseudo intellectualisation of art, I must admit that the cerebral aspects of art excite me. The politicisation is an extension of that process.

Books on crossfire have been published, roundtable discussions have been held. Why did the government react as it did, do you think it says something about the power of photography?

The association of photographs with real events makes the photographer a primary witness, and thereby the photograph becomes documentary evidence. This makes photography both powerful and dangerous. Way back in 1909, much before Photoshop came into play, Lewis Hine had said ‘While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.’

Today, liars who run corporations and rule powerful nations, also have photography at their disposal. This very powerful tool is used and abused, and it is essential that we come to grips with this new language. Advertising agencies with huge budgets use photography to shape our minds about products we buy. Politicians and their campaigns are also products that we, as consumers, are encouraged to buy into. I see no restrictions on the lies we are fed every day through advertising or political propaganda. It is when the public has access to the same tools, and in particular when they use it to expose injustice that photography becomes a problem. These seemingly ‘innocent’ photographs become charged with meaning as soon as we learn to read their underlying meaning. This makes them dangerous.

Perhaps this is also why photographic education has been systematically excluded from our education system. A tool for public emancipation will never be welcomed by an oppressive regime. And we will have oppressive regimes for a while to come.

‘Crossfire’ was curated by an international curator, and you yourself have curated exhibitions abroad. Do you think international curators are more likely to engage with work such as ‘Crossfire’ on the basis of aesthetic considerations rather than lived, political ones, since s/he will  be less knowledgeable about its history, meanings, metaphors, how the government has manufactured popular consent, resistance, etc. For instance, and you mention it in the brochure: John Pilger, the well-known journalist, had written when Barrister Moudood Ahmed had been arrested during the Fakhruddin-Moeenudin regime, he’s ‘a decent, brave man.’ And of course, it’s quite possible that Pilger didn’t know that the Barrister saheb, as law minister, was one of the political architects of RAB.

Ah yes, Pilger bungled that one. I think artistic collaborations create new possibilities. Our art practice is so often informed by western sensibilities that we at Drik deliberately explore southern interactions. The discussions between Kunda Dixit of Nepal and Marcelo Brodsky of Argentina in Chobi Mela V (our festival of photography) pointed to the remarkable similarity between the political movements in Peru and in South Asia. This made the inclusion of a Peruvian curator even more interesting, and Jorge Villacorte is a respected Latin American curator and art critic. Several other recognised international curators, from Lebanon, Tangiers and Italy had seen the show. I was somewhat surprised that while they introduced interesting ideas about curatorial and art practice and were hugely appreciative of the aesthetic and performative elements of the work, not one of them ever asked me about the impact it might have upon crossfire itself. Though it would be arrogant to suggest that this show would put an end to that.

As someone deeply in love with my country (I find words like patriotic and nationalistic problematic), my primary concern is the welfare of my community. If my work can contribute to improving the lives of my people, I will have been successful, regardless of how my art is perceived by critics. If the work is perceived as great art, but fails in its ultimate goal of furthering the cause of social justice, then I will have failed.

That said, the exhibition was only a small part of the larger movement for democracy. The activism surrounding the show, the legal action, the media mobilisation, and the spontaneous popular actions were all part of the process. The international curator had an important role to play, but only as a point of departure. We have since had students critiquing the curatorial process, where they have brought in elements relating to their political practice and social concerns. The debate resulting from the work is more important than the work itself. But it is the power of art, and particularly photography that makes such actions so vital.

There is an interesting sub-text to this exercise. The dinosaurs of Bangladeshi art have been incapable of recognising photography as an art form. Photographers are still not invited to participate in the Asian Biennale (though foreign photographers have even won the grand prize in the event). There is still no department of photography in either Shilapakala Academy (the academy of fine and performing arts) or Charukala Institute (the institute of fine arts). These are 19th-century institutions operating in the 21st century. It is interesting however, that while Charukala Institute refused to show my work in 1989, because it was a photographic, and not a painting, exhibition, it was the students of Charukala Institute who organised the first public protests when the police came and blockaged our gallery to prevent the opening of the Crossfire exhibition. It is reassuring that the students at least can raise their heads and look above the sand.

Drik under Crossfire (Independent)

Posted in New Age on 8th April 2010

Media reports on “Crossfire” exhibition

New Age Editorial

DAILY STAR Editorial

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

PRESS RELEASE

23 March 2010

Bangladesh: Lift ban on extrajudicial killings exhibition. Amnesty International is urging the Bangladeshi authorities to lift a ban on an exhibition of photographs raising awareness about alleged extrajudicial executions carried out by a special police unit.

“Yesterday’s closure of the Drik Picture Library exhibition “Crossfire” in Dhaka is a blow to the right to freedom of expression,” said Amnesty International’s Bangladesh Researcher, Abbas Faiz. “The government of Bangladesh must act immediately to lift the police ban and protect the right to peaceful expression in words, images or any other media in accordance with Bangladesh’s constitution and international law.”

Hours before the “Crossfire” exhibition was due to open at a special ceremony in Dhaka, police moved in and demanded that the organizers cancel it. When they refused to shut it down police closed the premises, claiming that the exhibition had no official permission to open and would “create anarchy”.

The exhibition includes photographs based on Drik’s case studies of killings in Bangladesh, which government officials have portrayed as deaths in “crossfire”.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Bangladesh since 2004 when the special police force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), was established.

In most cases, victims who die in the custody of RAB and other police personnel, are later announced to have been killed during “crossfire” or police “shoot-outs”.

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations consider these killings to be extrajudicial executions.

Human rights lawyers in Bangladesh see the closure of the exhibition as unjustified and with no legal basis. They are seeking a court order to lift the police ban on the exhibition.

Drik’s Director, Shahidul Alam says he has held hundreds of other exhibitions without needing official permission, and that “the government invoked a prohibitive clause only because state repression was being exposed”.

Abbas Faiz said:“By closing the “Crossfire” exhibition, the government of Bangladesh has effectively reinforced a culture of impunity for human rights violations. Amnesty International is calling for the government to take action against those who carry out extrajudicial executions, not those who raise their voices against it.”

The ban is also inconsistent with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s pledges that her government would take action to end extrajudicial executions.

Amnesty International is urging authorities to allow peaceful protests against the killings and to bring the perpetrators to justice.

END/

News in USA

Police in Bangladesh Close Photo Exhibit

By David Gonzalez

New York Times

By Rosa Maria Falvo

Spanning 150 years of photography from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this ambitious survey of historic and contemporary works includes over 400 images by 82 artists. Using ‘shared culture’ as a parameter, it is the first comprehensive vision of South Asia to be presented in the West; these images are not ‘about’ the region and there are no European perspectives to be seen. Indeed, those looking for a text driven, ethnographic narrative of an ex-colonial world will sadly be missing the point.

Installed in a bastion of Western art – London’s Whitechapel Gallery – 63 years after Indian Independence and the subsequent dissolution of the British Raj, this show aspires to explore its topography with decidedly indigenous eyes. Of course, politics is inherent in picture making – our ‘ways of seeing’ and the context in which we see them pose fundamental issues. Refreshingly, this is a case of self-discovery, a kind of meditative picturing of a collective self and its geographical truths, where the ‘other’ is observing from within.

Images like Mohammad Ali Salim’s Worker’s at a city construction site… (Bangladesh, 1980) and Mohammad Arif Ali’s Rainy Days Image of Lahore (Pakistan, 2008) are not invested in archetypal victims or street urchins. While they do not ignore the pain or the facts, they offer a purposeful and frequently hopeful alternative to the media driven images of death and destruction, which have arguably desensitised audiences on the ‘outside’. The curators have set out to question and even defy our received notions of the Subcontinent, presenting a sort of counter-colonial response to the official Western history of photography. They are asking us to celebrate South Asia’s contribution, beginning in India in 1850, and in this sense the show becomes a pioneering catalyst, inspired by the gaps.

The curatorial line wants to trace the finer social and creative turning points inherent in each body of work. Sunil Gupta references a particular instance in how transsexuals are depicted in the context of the historic “fluidity of sexuality in India”, previously outlawed under colonial law. While homogenisation is an obvious danger, he is quick to remind us that “culture cannot be partitioned”, and the power of photography to engage contemporary audiences is such that ‘Westerners’ are likely to notice the similarities between these nations, while ‘South Asians’ are necessarily sensitive to their differences. But the landscape is shifting, as ‘majority world‘ issues are increasingly addressed by those who understand them most and can no longer be ignored. More representations of the internal structures of hitherto ‘foreign’ realities will eventually balance out those one-dimensional visions of systems, symptoms, and conflicts. If there is a trend in the emergence of ‘indigenous photographers’ it is that they are able to achieve an intimacy with their subjects which enhances their humanity. For me it is this authenticity of image making that carries the editorial eloquence of its subject matter.

Paradoxically, despite its thriving art market, photography as a discipline is still emerging in India. And in Pakistan interest in this medium by a new generation of artists is a promising but recent phenomenon. Bangladesh has led the way with an established international festival – Chobi Mela – and Dhaka’s dynamic Drik gallery (Sanskrit for vision) which has represented local professionals for more than 20 years.

This show is arranged in five thematic sections, which inevitably blend into and across national stories: the portrait, the performance, the family, the street, and the body politic.

Legendary photographers from Bangladesh, such as Amanul Huq and Nasir Ali Mamun are presented alongside their present-day counterparts, such as Abir Abdullah, Shumon Ahmed, and Shahidul Alam.

There are works from the early 19th century from the renowned Alkazi Collection in Delhi, the Abhishek Poddar Collection in Bangalore, and the White Star Archive in Karachi, and many previously unseen works from family archives, galleries, and established contemporary artists. We see hand-painted images of courtesans and families by anonymous photographers in the very first Indian-run studios, journalistic depictions of key political events (Rashid Talukder’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returns to his homeland… in 1972 and Benazir Bhutto’s arrival at Karachi airport in 1988), and cutting edge reconfigurations of the built up environment (Farida Batool’s “Nai Reesan Shehr Lahore Diyan” 2006, and Rashid Rana’s Twins 2007). As virtual co-protagonists in the unfolding of these stories, viewers are left to provide their own social critiques.

Fantastic circus acts (Saibal Das’s Matinee Show 2001) and glamorous Bollywood stars (Dev Anand and Meena Kumari in the 1950s) capture portraits within portraits, reinforcing photography’s ability to empower the object of its gaze. Here is a region reconstructing its own image, touching on castes and sexuality as naturally as geopolitics and environmental disasters. It is not the ‘otherness’ we need to consider, but rather our willingness to become re-acquainted with what we have presumed to know.

Echoing the literary musing of one of the curators, Radhika Singh, who titled the show on a line from T.S Eliot’s Ash Wednesday (1930) – “This is the time of tension between dying and birth; The place of solitude where three dreams cross…” – I can’t help recalling William Blake’s Letter to Revd Dr Trusler (1799) – “As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers”. Packaging imagery and argument is always problematic, but this show’s self-assured and celebratory tones manage to amaze both aesthetically and intellectually. As if the collective lens were refocused on the circulation of discourse and the forging of transnational connections between people across time. It’s a pity this exhibition is not, at least at this stage, travelling to places like Birmingham or Leicester, where the fields of vision from within contemporary Britain would no doubt offer even richer educational perspectives.

Rosa Maria Falvo

Independent writer and curator, with a focus on Asian contemporary art. She is the Asia-Pacific Publications and Projects Consultant for Skira International Publishing in Milan.

Podcast of my talk at a symposium at the show in Fotomuseum Winterthur

Symposium at Fotomuseum Winterthur

First published in Nafas Art Magazine a project of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa, Germany)

So much for the post-national, globalised world. Looking through hundreds of photographs from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which will go on show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London this month, I find myself unable to follow the curators’ lead. Wisely, they have chosen to group the images thematically, rather than according to nationality; but almost immediately I am looking hungrily for Pakistan (my homeland), largely ignoring India, and pausing longest at pictures of Bangladesh from 1971, the year in which it ceased to be East Pakistan.

It isn’t that I don’t find anything of interest in India or in photographs of it. But of the three nations, India has always been the most visually reproduced; many of the photographs taken there feel over-familiar. This is not the over-familiarity of a scene I’ve personally witnessed or inhabited: it is the compositions or the subject matter or sometimes the photograph itself that I feel I’ve seen time and time again. There is Gandhi stepping out of that train; there are the Mumbai boys leaping into a body of water on a hot day; there is the movie poster in the style of movie posters.

It is something of a surprise to find how intent I am on tracking down pictures of Pakistan. I have spent the greater part of my life there and will be returning shortly, but neither homesickness nor estrangement lie behind my wanting to see more. It is the role of photographs themselves in Pakistan that may serve as explanation. There is still very little appreciation of photo-graphy as an art form, so pictures tend to fall into three categories: private celebrations, news – and cricket. I have seen countless pictures of weddings, of burning buses, of a fast bowler winding his arm over his shoulder at the end of his run-up. Life’s more quotidian details occur away from the lens, and so feel unacknowledged. Pakistan is a nation tremendously poor at acknowledging what goes on when it comes to individual lives, and bad at acknowledging the sweep of its own history. Great areas of the past and present remain away from the nation’s gaze.

If there is one period in history from which Pakistan most adamantly averts its eyes, it is 1971. That year, Pakistan ceased to be a nation with two wings, and the state of Bangladesh came into being. And so I turn to the Bangladeshi photographers in order to fix my gaze on that blood-soaked epoch. I don’t even realise I’m doing this, at first. I think I’m looking at a man’s head, cast in marble; the sculpture is cheek-down amid a cluster of stones, almost camouflaged by them. Then I read the caption: “Dismembered head of an intellectual killed 14 December 1971 by local collaborators of Pakistani army. Bangladesh.” It is extraordinarily eerie, and sad. There are other pictures of that period, too. Many, if not all, will probably be familiar to anyone from Bangladesh; none are part of Pakistan’s consciousness.

Pakistan’s erasure of its own muddled history is the subject of Bani Abidi’s witty series of photographs, The Ghost of Mohammad Bin Qasim. In the nation’s attempt to create an official history, which focuses on Muslims in the subcontinent (rather than Pakistan’s geographical boundaries), the Arab general Bin Qasim (712 AD) was lauded for being the first Muslim to successfully lead a military campaign in India – even though he did little to consolidate his position. In Abidi’s photographs, a man in Arab dress is shot at different locations in Karachi, including the mausoleum of the nation’s secular founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The man is clearly Photoshopped in, deliberately so: he represents the attempt to graft a false history on to Pakistan, linking it to the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.

While Abidi’s work asks the viewer to engage with history and politics, there are others that draw a more visceral response. Mohammad Arif Ali’s photograph of rain in Lahore captures the size and force of raindrops during the monsoons; the vivid colours at the edge of the frame also evoke how startlingly rinsed of dust the whole world looks. The boy darting out into the downpour, ahead of a line of traffic, his shalwar kameez plastered to his skin, is both lord of the world and a tiny creature, in danger of being crushed. It brings a familiar world vividly to mind. And yet, of course, exactly this scene could be played out – and photographed – in Delhi or Dhaka. It is foolish of me to think of it as quintessentially Pakistani. Sometimes these countries are three; sometimes one: the movement between three distinct nations and one region is impossible to pin down.

Away from the pictures of 1971, the Bangladeshi images are both unfamiliar (Munem Wasif‘s picture of a Burmese worker struggling through bushes in Bangladesh) and familiar: notably, Abir Abdullah’s Women Working in Old Dhaka, which shows two women making chapatis together, though their positioning suggests distance rather than camaraderie. Is their lack of proximity a consequence of class or personality?

I turn back to the pictures of India and am almost immediately struck by Ram Rahman’s Young Wrestlers, Delhi: two boys, each wearing a pair of briefs. It is mystifying that I didn’t notice before how one of them stares assertively at the camera, his muscles relaxed, in the most casual of poses. The other’s eyes are unsure, his muscles tensed, he is trying to suck in his stomach and puff up his chest, and there is a rip, it seems, in his briefs. The boys are touching but it’s clear they aren’t friends – not at the moment, at least. I worry for the tensed boy. He is going to lose his wrestling match; he is going to lose it badly.

And then there is Anay Mann’s picture of a breastfeeding woman with headphones over her ears: she looks wary, her head angled away from the camera. Is there someone in the room, just out of the camera’s reach? Or has she retreated into her own thoughts? And why is it that children’s toys can add such menace to a picture, as is the case with the yellow smiling object, its head bobbing, at the edge of the image?

I would see this exhibition differently if it were in Karachi. Or Mumbai. Or Dhaka. In London, I am so far removed from these landscapes I’m aware of the photographs’ “otherness”. But there’s also this: any kind of simultaneous engagement between these three nations, with so much in common and so much that sets them apart, is almost unheard of within the subcontinent itself. In Karachi, Dhaka or Mumbai, I would spend a very long time watching people look at these photographs. How we see ourselves; how we see each other – these two questions would be politically charged where they are not here. Strange that, only 63 years after the Raj, London should seem such a historically neutral venue, comparatively speaking.