Eduardo Santiago's Reviews > Shahidul Alam: My Journey as a Witness

Shahidul Alam by Shahidul Alam

My rating:

didn't like it it was ok liked it really liked it it was amazing

add to my books

Shahidul Alam: My Journey as a Witness
by?Shahidul Alam,?Rosa Maria Falvo?(Editor)

2860188

Eduardo Santiago‘s review

Jan 01, 12
4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Eduardo by:?Ginger
Painful to read. Troubling… but beautiful and inspiring as well. Alam comes across as deeply bitter, but unlike the rest of us he uses that to make this world a better place. Through his photography, his words, his actions, he brings truths to light. Beauty, too.
This is not a coffee table book. It’s not even mostly a photography book. It’s … autobiography? Geopolitical venting? Self-congratulation? Those but also much more. From my privileged first-world position it’s difficult to understand this book in context, to know where Alam is coming from. It’s easy to accept his perspective, to be temporarily outraged, and ultimately to do nothing because the third world (?Majority World?, as Alam insightfully calls it) is so remote.
Despite that, despite Alam’s occasionally difficult prose, I think this is a book worth reading and absorbing. A perspective that may be new to many of us. A reminder of so much that still needs to be fixed in this world, and that there are people fighting to fix it.

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.”

Leave a Reply