Portrait

ESSAY

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Portrait of Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam by Fariha Karim

Giving Voice
to the Lions
Shahidul Alam:

By Salma Hasan Ali

He was taking curious but evocative

photographs: a pair of eyeglasses of a

pashmina weaver; calloused feet working

the pedals of a loom; dozens of tillis

wrapped in wool of every hue lining the

looms. Children surrounded him wherever

we went, tugging at his bright magenta

kurta and clamoring for their pictures to

be taken. He would take their photograph,

and show them their images captured in
pixels for the first time. Sometimes hed

disappear, turning up a few minutes later

amidst a herd of goats or on a nearby

treetop, always finding the right vantage

point for the story he wanted to tell.

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PORTRAIT: SHAHIDUL ALAM: GIVING VOICE TO THE LIONS

Pictures have power, Alam

says, and its because of
that power that he became
involved in photography.

Shahidul Alam teaching photography to children in the village of Phandauk, in Bangladesh.

We were in Srinagar, Kashmir in the spring of 2008, as part of a

gathering of artists and intellectuals invited to inaugurate a center
for Kashmiriyat studies. For me, this was also an opportunity to
pursue my lifelong passion with pashmina shawls. Nervous about
wandering outside the hotel given the tense security situation in the
city, I decided to ask a fellow participant to join me. It was the fancy
camera around his neck that swayed me perhaps he wouldnt mind
taking photographs for my story, I thought. He graciously agreed
and we set off with the pashmina wala, meandering through barbedwire-lined streets and sheep-filled alleyways with Kalashnikovarmed soldiers at every turn. Little did I know then that in the seat
next to me was one of the worlds most renowned photographers.
Shahidul Alam has won photographys most prestigious awards.
His work has been exhibited in major museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou
in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Tehran. He is the first Asian to win the prestigious
Mother Jones Award for documentary photography and the first
non-Caucasian to chair World Press Photos international jury. He
has turned his hometown of Dhaka, Bangladesh into a photography
capital, drawing many of the most celebrated international photographers to teach and mentor, and turning out some of the finest
emerging photographers in the world. His new book, My Journey as
a Witness, has been hailed by legendary photo editor John Morris as
one of the most important books ever created by a photographer,
and it goes far beyond photography.
But Alams achievements and recognitions tell only a small part
of his story. It is his passion and mission that
make him truly revolutionary. With photography as one tool in his tool box, which also
includes writing, activism, teaching and social
entrepreneurship, Alam is on a mission: to
change the way we see each other, the way we
interact and engage with one another, as human beings, societies and nations.
Alam, in his bright cotton kurtas, brown
leather chappals, cream pocket-lined vest,
and ubiquitous camera pouch around his
waist, crisscrosses the globe from exhibit
openings to curatorial assignments to speaking engagements, sharing his message, as he
did when I heard him speak at the PDN/
PhotoPlus Expo in New York City in 2008.
When you think of a country like Bangladesh, the first images that come to mind are
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of floods or disaster, he said at the keynote. We need to question

that.
Stories of our part of the world, by and large, are told by people
who have been sent out to discover that world. Largely, white, Western
photographers are sent to countries like mine, and people like myself
find ourselves represented by them. I find that problematic.
Alam challenges the terminology used to describe the region
third world or developing world which, he says, helps perpetuate
the stereotype of these countries as hopeless and poor. I personally
dont intend to be third of anything, he often quips. In the early 1990s,
Alam coined a new phrase majority world to redefine what others call the developing world in more positive terms that recognize
not only the fact of numbers, but also the vast intellectual, social and
cultural assets that reside in the majority of the worlds population. He
doesnt deny the reality of poverty, but his photographs offer us another
perspective: a farmer replanting his fields after a flood destroys his livelihood; a fisherman heading back to the sea that swallowed his family;
a migrant worker whispering a tender goodbye at the airport, unsure
when, if, he will return. An image of poverty should not reduce people
to being icons of poverty, Alam says.
Alam reveals the beauty of his country and the resilience and
dignity of her people. His photographs, a hundred of which are
included in his book, capture how people live, work and carry on,
despite seemingly insurmountable odds. A photograph of a patient
at Bangladeshs only psychiatric hospital reveals an intimacy rarely
seen in images of those whom society has written off. Another of
a woman cooking on her rooftop after floods inundated her home
shows her getting on with life and tending to her family. One
needs to recognize that here is a people who will, come what may,
persevere. Their endurance, their tenacity, their ability to overcome whatever there might be, I think is what needs to be celebrated, Alam said in an interview with National Public Radio.

The glass wall in Zia International Airport separates migrant workers from their family. A
gap in the door is the only way they can speak to one another. A woman speaks to her man as he
is about to depart. He will then face the gap and speak, the woman turning her head to listen.

Women in Aurungabad, Maharashtra, fetch drinking water from afar in the early hours of the morning. Effluent from sugar cane factories have polluted local
waterbodies making the water undrinkable. The workers are migrants from Rajasthan, who work as bonded labourers.

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Woman cooking on the rooftop of her house during floods. 1st September 1988. The water went up another three feet.

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A woman tends to jute plants in Northern Bangladesh. Eighty

percent of the world's high quality jute grows in Bangladesh.
Jute is used in making cloth, shawl, ropes, carpet backing cloth,
gunny bags and many other useful things. Jute bags are very suitable for packing of food grains.

Fishermen in Shondeep, Bangladesh, repairing their boats after

the cyclone in April 1991.

Alam says, the Floating Forest was photographed at the Kew

Garden in London, during my early years as a photographer.
It was photographed in Kodak Infra Red film, which requires
working with an opaque filter and special processing. As one
has to effectively photograph blind, and the end results are very
different from what one sees, it was one of my first attempts at
visualising an image as film sees it, as opposed to what one sees
with ones eyes.

Boatmen in Dal Lake clearing weeds early in the morning.

Srinagar, Kashmir, India. May 28, 2008. Famous for its natural
beauty, Kashmir refers to the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir consisting of the Kashmir valley, Jammu and
Ladakh; the Pakistani-administered provinces of the Northern
Areas and Azad Kashmir, and the Chinese-administered region
of Aksai Chin. About 12 million people live in Kashmir, of
which around 70% are Muslims. The rest include Hindus, Sikhs
and Buddhists. Hindus live mostly in the south and around the
city of Jammu. To the east is the Ladakh region, where the majority of the people are Buddhists and of Tibetan origin. Most of
the Kashmiri people work on farms. Others are engaged in small
industries making shawls, rugs and carpets. Kashmir is well
known for its wool and, in particular, its shawls and carpets.

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A nurse combs the hair of a mental patient in Hemayetpur, Pabna. At the time the photograph
was taken, Hemayetpur was the only mental hospital in Bangladesh, having 400 beds.

What bothers Alam is the lack of plurality in who gets to take the
pictures, and the unidirectional way in which stories are told. Even
if a different type of photograph is taken, thats only the first step in
a complex process of how images are seen. The photograph needs to
be contextualized, reach international media markets, and pass the
scrutiny of editorial gatekeepers who decide what reality they want to
reveal, Alam explains. He sees his role as not just a photographer, but
as someone who manages how a story engages with an audience. He
often quotes an African proverb to encapsulate this message: Until the
lions have their own storytellers, tales of the hunt shall always glorify
the hunter. Alam is giving voice to the lions.
In 1989, Alam set up a picture agency called Drik (vision in
Sanskrit) in Dhaka to make it easier for majority-world photographers to make their work available to broader markets. Step by
step, he set up photo labs to make quality prints; established gallery spaces to display work; printed and sold calendars and postcards door-to-door to raise funds; set up Bangladeshs first email
service, as international phone calls and faxes were expensive; and
started training women and poor children in photography to promote diversity in the field. Drik later established Banglarights,
a human rights network, and DrikNews, an independent news
outlet that relies on citizen journalists.
As Drik gathered momentum, the next step was to set up
a school of photography, and Pathshala South Asian Media
Academy was established in 1998. Alam attracted high profile
international photographers to come to Dhaka to teach, including Reza Deghati, Pedro Meyer, Robert Pledge and Raghu Rai.
Soon Pathshala students were winning prestigious awards such as
Mother Jones, World Press and National Geographic All Roads.
Today, many regard Pathshala as one of the best photography
schools in the world.
Chobi Mela, the first festival of photography in Asia, was
inaugurated in 2000. Held biannually, with bold themes such
as freedom, exclusion and resistance, it brings together Bangladeshi photographers with their international counterparts to
showcase photography, exchange ideas and, most importantly,
challenge viewpoints. An innovative feature of the festival takes
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He often quotes an African

proverb to encapsulate this
message: until the lions have
their own storytellers, tales
of the hunt shall always
glorify the hunter. Alam is
giving voice to the lions.
artwork out of the galleries and into the streets, to the people
whose stories are being told. Mobile exhibits on riksha vans travel
to football fields, school playgrounds and markets, allowing thousands of people to engage with the images. Chobi Mela VII on
Fragility will take place in Dhaka in January 2013.
More recently, Alam co-founded Majority World, a photo
library and agency with offices in London and Sri Lanka that
connects majority-world photographers with image buyers in developed countries, again to more widely promote local stories as
told by local storytellers.
When I first sat down to interview Alam at the Jacob Javits
Convention Center in New York, it quickly became clear that this
is a man known and loved by many. One after another, friends,
colleagues, students and family members who had gathered from
all over the world, found him and wanted to be with him. With his
genial charm and irrepressible laugh, he bear-hugged each one.
I never thought of becoming a photographer when I was small,
Alam tells me. Im from a middle-class home, and the expectation
is to aspire to a respected profession such as doctor or engineer.
Alam, born in Dhaka in 1955, went to the United Kingdom in 1972
for higher education. He pursued a PhD in chemistry at the University of London, and got into photography partly by accident. When
he had an opportunity to travel to the United States, a friend asked
if Alam would buy him a camera. When he returned, his friend
couldnt pay for it, so Alam was stuck with the camera. He started

PORTRAIT: SHAHIDUL ALAM: GIVING VOICE TO THE LIONS

teaching himself photography, reading every book he could find

800 or so over two years. His background in chemistry helped him
experiment with different processes and techniques. Alam worked
as a research assistant to finance his PhD, and started printing photographs to pay for his growing passion for photography.

Alams drive is relentless, his

energy boundless, and his
travel schedule peripatetic.
In 1983, a photo Alam took at Londons Kew Gardens, called
Floating Forest, was selected best photograph of the year by the
London Arts Council. It gave him the confidence to pursue his interest as a profession. Alam started taking portraits of children, but
felt he was getting too comfortable in his role as a photographer so
he returned to Dhaka in 1984. There he set up his own studio and
started taking photos for company brochures and film stars. But he
soon realized that his passion lay in photographs of a different kind.
In the late-1980s, a democratic movement was simmering in
Bangladesh, and Alam, always having been political, wanted to
document it. He took to the streets, taking photographs of police
attacks, students breaking curfew and ordinary people showing
courage, himself being beaten and arrested in the process. He knew
then that the camera would be his tool to advance social equality in
his country and globally.
When Lt. Gen. H. M. Ershad fell in 1990, Alam organized an
impromptu exhibition of photographs of the democratic struggle
at the art college. Lines to see the show were more than a mile
long, and nearly 400,000 people saw the images in almost four
days. Pictures have power, Alam says, and its because of that
power that he became involved in photography.
The image that has had the greatest effect on Alam is that of an
11-year-old orphan boy named Mizan, who worked in Alams parents home. Mizan would watch television from outside the living
room, through an open door. Alam captured that image and shared

it with his mother and Mizan. After that, Mizan watched TV from
inside the living room. It was a small but important victory for me,
writes Alam in My Journey as a Witness. It may not have changed
the world, but it changed my mother and it certainly changed me.
Alam has been using the power of images ever since, to challenge peoples assumptions, stir their complacency and rouse
them into action perhaps no more profoundly than in his recent
exhibit called Crossfire.
Crossfire refers to the extrajudicial killings by Bangladeshs Rapid
Action Battalion (RAB), an anticrime group set up eight years ago.
In a series of evocative photographs, Alam depicts the places where
victims of crossfire were last seen, based on extensive research of cases.
There are no people in these photos, no bodies or signs of violence.
The intention is to reach much deeper, to agitate at an emotional level.
The government shut down the exhibit on opening day in Dhaka, causing nationwide protests. Alam and his colleagues held an
impromptu launch outside the gallery; later the closure was denounced as illegal. Crossfire was recently exhibited at the Queens
Museum of Art in New York City and is traveling to the Powerhouse Museum in Australia in November 2012. About 500 posters
of the exhibit are being distributed to human rights organizations
inside and outside Bangladesh. Even the Supreme Court of Bangladesh has asked that the work be shown in the court.
While immediately after the show, crossfire deaths went down,
they began to increase again, Alam says, and RAB changed its tactics
and began to 'disappear' people. Alam is currently working on a story
about a woman activist named Kalpana Chakma, who disappeared
16 years ago. Collaborating with a theater artist, Alam is planning a
photographic performance to address disappearances and extrajudicial
killings in the region, scheduled for June 2013. Alams drive is relentless, his energy boundless, and his travel schedule peripatetic he recently racked up half a million frequent flyer miles, before using them
to reunite family members across continents. On a recent stopover in
Washington, D.C. en route to Albuquerque, New Mexico; London;
Colombo, Sri Lanka; Mal, Maldives; and Bangalore, India Alam
tells me about his next project: to set up a world class media university
in Bangladesh, with high level professors and a residential campus. Im
convinced that education, media and culture are the three most powerful change agents today and I think what were trying to do, done
well, would undoubtedly make it difficult for autocratic governments
or democratic governments that behave autocratically to get away with
exploiting its people. Alams journey, as a witness, but more so as a
catalyst for social and political change, continues unabated.
Salma Hasan Ali is a Washington DC based writer focusing on cross-cultural
issues and people making a difference, and Chief Inspiration Officer of MoverMoms, an NGO that promotes community service. She is also a contributing
editor to The Islamic Monthly.

Im convinced that education, media and culture

are the three most powerful change agents today
and I think what were trying to do, done well,
would undoubtedly make it difficult for autocratic
governments or democratic governments that behave
autocratically to get away with exploiting its people.
Mizan, a young boy watching television, sitting by the
door. He can enter the room only for work. He is not allowed to sit inside the room. Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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