Rashid Talukder 1939 – 2011 ?Daktaaar?. The loud call would be promptly followed by a big grin and a bigger bear hug. He insisted on calling me by that title and always referred to it, when addressing me in public. Rashid Talukder (Rashid Bhai ? elder brother – to all of us) didn?t speak ?posh? Bangla, struggled somewhat with English and wasn?t encumbered with any of the polish of ?bhodrolok? upbringing many of us were trapped in. Unlike many others however, he took pride in his upbringing. That his apprenticeship involved making tea for the darkroom team, was something he was completely at ease with. There lay his charm. Quick witted, fast on his feet, streetwise, gregarious, loud and completely disarming. Rashid Talukder was an unlikely rebel who was impossible to dislike. He took ownership of my title. Despite his genius, he was all too aware of how photojournalists were regarded. In a profession way down in the pecking order of the hierarchical newsroom, he had felt the full brunt of the class structure where the photojournalist was the illiterate worker. Visually illiterate news editors would call the shots when it came to picture use. The concept of a picture editor had never entered newspaper parlance. The status my Daktar title implied to a photojournalist was something we were all going to share. Photographer Rashid Talukder receiving the Chobi Mela Lifetime Achievement Award from the adviser to the caretaker govenrment C. M. Shafi Sami.
Those were the days one would check the chemistry in the developer from its taste. An extra puff of the cigarette would serve as a safelight to check if the film had been sufficiently exposed. Deadlines often meant printing directly from wet negatives. Once the twin lens reflex cameras gave way to the more versatile 35 mm, the film stock itself was often the back end of a roll of cine film bought cheaply from movie industry rejects. Fibre base wasn?t a fashionable thing in those days. It was the only type available. Chinese Xiamen and Era paper were found in limited grades with changes in the chemistry providing variation in contrast. It was in those grueling unventilated toilets converted to darkrooms that Rashid Bhai made print after print that documented the painful, rebellious, joyous moments of a young nation in the making.
I chided him for the fact that he had never made any contact sheets. His life?s possession, a garbage bag filled with negatives in no specific order or category, made it impossible to work from his archives. But what photographs! This was the man who had witnessed every major event in Bangladesh?s turbulent history. Interspersed between the iconic images of our nation?s past were the curious observations of a natural story teller. Kids bathing in the river with a real live elephant for a rubber duck. The courtship rites of hill people, a child being blessed by a sadhu, a duck sedately walking her ducklings across a busy Motijheel street were the slices of life that peered out of the more remembered seminal moments of our history that this remarkable photojournalist had meticulously recorded. Continue reading “The light we failed to see”
?I?ve overcome the blow, I?ve learned to take it well, I only wish my words could just convince myself,that it just wasn?t real. But that?s not the way it feels? ? Jim Croce
Status: Open/Unrestricted
Mood: Meditative/Gloomy/Angry
Music in Background: Do it Again ? Steely Dan
Date/Time- Line: From Then, Now to Never
My Dear Tareque,
Something went awfully wrong on Saturday the 13th of August 2011, and they tell me that you will remain incommunicado?forever. Fair deal pal?that appreciated if not understood; I hope you will take?time out to read this letter. I have deliberately marked it open and unrestricted, so that somewhere down the line somehow, maybe through a gap in the ether, it will be delivered to you unblemished.
You are the savviest of communicators for our generation indeed in the history of Bangladesh. I know for certain that you will continue with your job beyond the 24/07/365 spectral dimension, a rather limited sphere for a genius like you.
It?s this delusion we call?life the Baul in both of us recognizes that stops me from mentioning you in the?past tense. It would be an insult to the living and illuminated spirit that has broken free from a clay tomb. Death is a celebration as much as?life an unending cycle; the entrapped Clay Bird is now free to hover.
As early as 1983 when you were working like an obsessive maniac on?Adam Surat featuring living footages of Lal Miah, you charted your road map in life. You chose an iconoclast, a living legend as your subject. A subject who on the quiet had gone International, and his paintings hung side-by-side with masters like Matisse and Dali, was yet, little known to his own people then, as even today.
Quite characteristically you explained with unending patience, about technological advancements and why your 16 mm celluloid print of?Adam Surat can?t be sent to a festival as the mandatory requirement was U-Matic, NTSC BVU format etc. Very few people in Bangladesh understood what the heck you and I were talking about.
Worse was to follow. Despite my reluctance you bull headedly went ahead and talked to the illiterate proprietor of the Travel Agency where I was working – for?sponsorship. You were shown the door and the same month I quit. In retrospect, not many doors were open to us anyway friend. We had a notorious reputation for speaking our minds and there wasn?t a huge appetite for our?brutal to a fault honesty.
Communications between us were never regular or irregular, but I find it comforting to think that whenever there was a crisis we always met and spent quality time. In winter of 1987 after a whiskey wasted night when we talked only about?financial solvency I had no way of knowing what was really doing overtime in your mind.
So it was more of an embarrassment than a shock that the same morning after waving me goodbye, you tried a hop-skip-and-jump in front of a public bus? Man that was weird. If your ambition was to bag an athletic gold for Bangladesh in the Olympics, you chose a real lousy turf for a practice run?…phew!
Your personal turbulences were?officially over in 1988 when you walked in to my office arm-in-arm with Catherine Shapiere. Before long fate conspired and she was being hounded by people in?absolute power who were not quite able to understand the economics or politics of a visiting American student with a perpetually broke Bangladeshi boyfriend! Love perhaps was an obsolete word back then.
Our last ditch plea to get the US Embassy to help was met by a stern official on the phone. To our horror we learnt that he will ensure Catherine?s passport is returned, but could do nothing about the deportation order. The three of us hugged and cried but our gloom was short lived.
I remember Catherine promising she would return which she did much earlier than expected. And that poem on her adopted motherland written at the Departure lounge of Dhaka Airport after a humiliating interrogation by Immigration Police was bitterly poignant. The two of you were destined to serve the Nation, and do so with the greatest honor and highest of admiration. No power on earth could dare stop that.
I came to know about your nuptials courtesy the grapevine. Months later you enjoyed my quip when I pointed to the framed portrait of the two of you in a wall.?Prem er porey frame ? aha!
Then most annoyingly you vanished without a trace not to return until the early nineties. When you did, you excitedly summoned me to talk about a?treasure trove that you had discovered in New York and NO, you assured me you haven?t robbed a Bank! ?Nevertheless I rushed to see you and Catherine with a hope that..?ahem?.I may end up being an?important side-kick for a soon to be billionaire in Bangladesh.
An hour into the meeting at your Kalabagan hangout with all that hush-hush secrecy, I realized what you have in hand was indeed priceless, but fraught with risk higher than a Bank vault. It was a people?s statement that no political party would be able to stomach. Never spoken but never denied – our lives were at stake.
Reading between the lines, I am sure had it not been on Catherine?s insistence, you wouldn?t have budged to call up Lear Levin. This was based on an emotive flashback by a much inebriated Tareq Ali in New York. And sure enough Lear Levin was on the phone directory. And sure enough so was the cache, preserved in mint condition in his temperature controlled basement. Hours of raw celluloid footage of the Liberation War, not blood or gore but front line cultural activists in action, entertaining guerrillas and common people.
And there was Tareq Bhai, Benu Da, Naila and Shahin Apa, Shopon Da and so many more. From reel, real to surreal, it was as if 1971 had returned, courtesy you – to tell its own tale in 1995.
The two of us have tormented for years whenever the Liberation War came up for discussions. Here we were faced with a new generation and our reminiscences as teenagers growing up in 1971 were rubbished. ?Were we dreaming back then, or are we lying today?? You finally had the answer to my question.?We NOW HAVE THE PROOF Dosto! The next challenge was how to get this across to the people of Bangladesh, the ultimate beneficiary of the treasure.
Muktir Gaan was then an unfolding history of a history in changed times, when we had all but given up on the bloodiest phase in our history. From handling the Censor Board without editing out a single frame, to organizing screening and alternative out-of-the box distribution without?sponsors or patron you masterminded the movie reaching furthest corners of Bangladesh without dithering on your resolve.
Ironically while you received a lot of pats on your back, when it came to real help, you had next to none. Try as you may to hide this my friend, I know for a fact that with all of that happening around you, there were days you went without food. The prohibitive cost of the movie burnt a huge hole in your pocket which was never very deep in the first place.
It was my sheer fortune and destiny to be a tiny piece in a gigantic jig-saw puzzle that was to be the?Muktir Gaan project. I am honored together with other volunteers and friends, to be a roadie and lift and lug the very expensive projector equipments and precious celluloid prints during the initial screenings at Public Library Auditorium.
I am equally honored that you?ordered our friend Shampa Reza and me to be the MC?s for the first screening of?Muktir Gaan to diplomats, bureaucrats and others at the Dhaka Museum Auditorium. The shows at Manikganj, Faridpur and Bhanga where I accompanied you and Catherine in those tumultuous days will forever be etched in my memory.
But then, we had our differences sometimes very heated. While you agreed with me most times, you never accepted my pathological rejection of the status quo or contempt for Culture Vultures and Media Mafia who were hanging around our motley crew for all the wrong reasons.
To quote Bob Marley, I was merely??Oba, ob-serving the hypocrites, as they would mingle with the good people we meet?, so all I could do was watch dejectedly from the periphery and take another toke of Sinsemilia! You are the superior being. You could hear history calling, you could hear the peoples cry when defeat after defeat, our senses had gone numb.
And then it was?Matir Moyna (Clay Bird) and Cannes in 2002. You firmly placed Bangladesh in the International Cinema map. Everything was to change, except you my dear friend. Your dynamism was infectious as usual, but you remained the forever approachable Tareque Masud.
I thank God for that. Your head didn?t outgrow your shoulders. You had no pretensions to be a Ray or Kiarostami or stoop to the perverted commercial decadence of a Farooki??..who?
Last if not the least?Dosto?Runway was awesome and I don?t know if I thanked you enough for the peek preview at your house last year.
Catch up with you soon.
Salutes – my comrade in thoughts.
Cheers!
Mac
PS. I have not been able to go see Catherine and Nishad. I don?t know what to tell them about your?disappearance when enough has already been said. Award winning Bangladesh film makers Tareque and Catherine Masud and their two month old son Nishaad. Tareque Masud died in a car accident in August 2011. ?Photo: June 2010. ??Adam Hume New Age XTRA. Print Version. Friday, 26th August 2011
Somewhat romanticised, particularly considering what?s been happening in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. But it is a beautiful country, despite the politicians. Thanks to my Pakistani friend Isa Daudpota for forwarding the clip.
An insight into the evolution of one of the most significant movements in contemporary photography, through the eyes and voice of the man who shaped it. An extraordinary artist, Shahidul Alam is a photographer, writer, activist, and social entrepreneur who used his art to chronicle the social and artistic struggles in a country known largely for poverty and disasters.
Lucid and personal, this much-awaited book includes over 100 photographs tracing Alam?s artistic career, activism, and the founding of photography organizations. From early images shot in England to photographs of the last two decades in his native Bangladesh, this is a journey from photojournalism into social justice. Alam?s superb imagery is matched by his perceptive accounts, at once deeply intimate and bitingly satirical.
About the Author
Shahidul Alam, profoundly influenced by inequality in his native Bangladesh and The Liberation War, pursued a life in photography to challenge oppression and imperialism in all its forms. Attacked, arrested, and threatened with death, Alam built what many consider to be the finest photography school in the world, an award-winning agency, and the world?s most diverse photography festival. Widely celebrated, Alam claims as his achievements not the awards and exhibitions but the people he has trained and the lives he has transformed.?Rosa Maria Falvo is a writer and curator, and Skira?s international commissions editor, specializing in Asian contemporary art.
Introductions by: Sebasti?o Salgado
Shahidul has managed to create a community, giving it a framework and creating links, as he has already done in Bangladesh. This is not merely another virtual community, like so many others, which have undoubtedly demonstrated their utility, but a truly concrete ensemble, which is a composite of all generations attached to their native soil, who share a much vaster territory than that of any one country. The territory I speak of is, of course, the photographic world of Shahidul Alam, which is also mine, as well as each and every one of ours. A world where we can daily sense our conscience and our faith in our planet.
and Raghu Rai
In India we have many more photographers, some of them very good, and there are many galleries for art and especially photography. As well as reputed newspapers and magazines ? much is happening on many levels. But we don?t have a Shahidul Alam, who can combine them into a cohesive social and creative force.
The book was launched in Dhaka on the 23rd September 2011
The touring version on the exhibition will open at the Wilmotte Gallery (formerly Patrick Litchfield’s studio) in London on the 6th October 2011
The London launch (Grand Hyatt Churchill) will take place on the 10th October 2011
The New Delhi launch (Habitat Centre) will take place on the 15th October 2011
The New York launch (Rizolli Book Store) is on the 10th November 2011
A trailer for the book:
The regular weekly “Solidarity for Limon” rally had been steadily attracting bigger crowds, despite the monsoon rains. The gathering this Friday the 24th June 2011 was especially large. The street plays were popular and since this was not an event aligned to either of the main political parties, it attracted ordinary people who came to express solidarity, or merely to enjoy the performance.
This week’s performance, a drama called Khekshial (Jackal), performed by Aranyak Natyadal in front of the National Museum at around 4:30pm, was however disrupted when two men burst through the surrounding crowd and began wrecking the props. Screengrab from video: 9 mins 0 secs? Screengrab from video: 9 mins 06 secs
Attack visible from 8 mins 58 secs onwards. The audience, intially slow to react, as they thought it was part of the play, soon went after the men, but they disappeared into the crowd. Later a young man called Al-Amin was caught by the crowd and accused of being one of the attackers. The man was taken away by Shahbag police, who arrived sometime after the event. The police are reported to have released Al-Amin as he was an innocent by-stander.
The organisers have pledged to continue their protests until the government withdraw the false cases against Limon Hossein and provide adequate compensation for the loss of his leg.
`Attack on demo for Limon,’ bdnews24
Fri, Jun 24th, 2011 8:23 pm BdST
http://www.bdnews24.com/details.php?id=199289&cid=2
and, `Goons attack demo for Limon,’ New Age, 25/06/2011 00:42:00
http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/frontpage/23806.html
Tushikur Rahman and GMB Akash shortlisted in prestigious photo contest.
Tushikur Rahman, a second year student of the three year BA programme in photography at Pathshala South Asian Media Academy, was yesterday announced as one of the 10 photographers from across the world who have been short listed for the 2011 Sony World Photography Awards Student Focus competition.
Tushikur’s short listed images have triumphed over hundreds of images entered from around the world into the world’s one of the most high profile student photography programme and award, says a press release issued from London yesterday. Photo: Tushikur Rahman
Being shortlisted, Tushikur has two parts to his prize. Firstly, his image will be exhibited as part of the Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition at Somerset House in London and secondly, he will be flown to London in April to take part in the World Photography Festival London and in the final stage of the competition.
Majed Miya, a carpenter, on the roof of the Dhaka to Mymensing train. He has travelled this way for two decades, going to Dhaka for work and returning weekly to his family in Mymensing. In Bangladesh many people ride on the roofs of trains as frequently that is the only space available. For others, the fares are too high and can be avoided or reduced by travelling on the roof. However, this practice also leads to regular accidents, many of them fatal. ??GMB Akash
While Bangladesh might be the minnows in test cricket. In the field of photography, Bangladesh has carved a space for itself. Former students of the prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass, GMB Akash, Andrew Biraj, Munem Wasif and Saiful Huq Omi are amongst the finest photographers around today. Abir Abdullah, a student of the first World Press Photo seminar series in 1998, was a member of the international jury this year.
The international jury of the premier contest World Press Photo,?is considered the UN of photojournalism.?Its accolades are coveted by photographers across the world. Shahidul Alam, who has been a juror on four occasions, is the only Asian to have chaired the international jury, ?Besides these Pathshala photographers, Shafiqul Alam Kiron, a photographer from the MAP agency has also been a winner in the past. Andrew Biraj was also a winner (3rd Prize) in the Daily Life category this year, with the following image:
The results of the 54th annual World Press Photo Contest were announced during a press conference at the Boekmanzaal in the Amsterdam City Hall, Amstel. This year again a record number of photographs with 108,059 images were submitted by 5,847 photographers. The photographers represent 125 different nationalities.
The members of the jury were:
Chair
? David Burnett, USA, photojournalist and founding member Contact Press Images
Members
? Abir Abdullah, Bangladesh, photographer EPA and vice principal Pathshala South Asian Media Academy
? Vince Aletti, USA, freelance critic
? Koji Aoki, Japan, chief photographer Aflo sport / Aflo dite and president Aflo Co., Ltd.
? Peter Bialobreszki, Germany, artist
? Harry Borden, UK, photographer
? Giovanna Calvenzi, Italy, picture editor Sportweek / La Gazzetta dello Sport
? Marizilda Cruppe, Brazil, photographer O Globo / Eve Photographers
? Ruth Eichhorn, Germany, director of photography Geo
? Renata Ferri, Italy, photo editor Io Donna – Corriere Della Sera
? Heinz Kluetmeier, USA, photographer Sports Illustrated
? Mattias Klum, Sweden, photographer and filmmaker
? H?ric Libong, Cameroon, head of photo department Panapress
? Enric Mart?, Spain, regional editor AP for Latin America and Caribbean
? Wim Melis, The Netherlands, curator Noorderlicht
? Terence Pepper, UK, curator of photographs National Portrait Gallery
? Sujong Song, South Korea, independent curator and photo editor
? Sophie Stafford, UK, BBC Wildlife Magazine
? Aidan Sullivan, UK, vice president photo assignment Getty Images
Secretaries
? Daphn? Angl?s, France/USA, European picture coordinator The New York Times
? Stephen Mayes, UK, managing director VII Photo Agency
Former student Andrew Biraj, is currently a teacher at Pathshala The South Asian Media Academy
I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin break for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you or dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain?t
louder than this breath.
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.
