Subscribe to ShahidulNews

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.

Author: Shahidul Alam

Time Magazine Person of the Year 2018. A photographer, writer, curator and activist, Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry before switching to photography. His seminal work “The Struggle for Democracy” contributed to the removal of General Ershad. Former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the Drik agency, Chobi Mela festival and Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world. Shown in MOMA New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Royal Albert Hall and Tate Modern, Alam has been guest curator of Whitechapel Gallery, Winterthur Gallery and Musee de Quai Branly. His awards include Mother Jones, Shilpakala Award and Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dali International Festival of Photography. Speaker at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge universities, TEDx, POPTech and National Geographic, Alam chaired the international jury of the prestigious World Press Photo contest. Honorary Fellow of Royal Photographic Society, Alam is visiting professor of Sunderland University in UK and advisory board member of National Geographic Society. John Morris, the former picture editor of Life Magazine describes his book “My journey as a witness”, (listed in “Best Photo Books of 2011” by American Photo), as “The most important book ever written by a photographer.” View all posts by Shahidul Alam