Category: lectures

Strolling with the zeitgeist

By Brian Dougherty: Frieze

MONOGRAPH

Six decades of avoiding being categorized

image

Patrick Ireland,?Five Identities, 2002, photograph

After training as a doctor in Ireland, Brian O?Doherty was an art critic for The New York Times in the 1960s, produced and hosted two art series for television; edited Aspen 5+6 (1967) (which included Roland Barthes?s essay ?The Death of the Author? and Susan Sontag?s ?The Aesthetics of Silence?); and was editor of Art in America from 1971?74. Throughout, he continued to make work as an artist. O?Doherty also served for 19 years as director of the film, radio and television section of the National Endowment for the Arts, where he funded artists and exhibition spaces working with new media. His published works includeInside the White Cube: Ideologies of the Gallery Space?(1976) and the novel?The Deposition of Father McGreevy?(2000), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The first monograph on his work,?Brian O?Doherty/Patrick Ireland: Between Categories(Brenda Moore McCann; Lund Humphries/Ashgate), was published in 2009. O?Doherty continues to make art and write. His novel?The Cross-dresser?s Secret?will be published by Sternberg Press later this year; his solo show at Kunstmuseum Bayreuth, Germany, opens 3 July. The following essay is an edited version of the lecture he delivered at Frieze Talks in 2012. Continue reading “Strolling with the zeitgeist”

Chobi Mela talks

Some of the highlights of Chobi Mela VII presentations


Pablo Bartholomew (India) in conversation with Munem Wasif and Shahidul Alam Continue reading “Chobi Mela talks”

Shahidul Alam presenting at Tate Modern

Violence and Representation – Part 6 18 September 2010 by Shahidul Alam

To coincide with the exhibition Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, this symposium explores violence as a subject in relation to representations in the broadest range of historical and geographical?contexts.
It includes international artists, photojournalists and theorists who from their distinctive perspectives will attempt to unveil notions of spectatorship and consumption of violent images in contemporary culture. Key questions will encompass the notion of the political, apolitical or depoliticised spectator of representations of violence; the consequences of these kinds of practice and the difference between photo reportage and art photography. Speakers include Shahidul Alam, Steve Edwards, Susan Meiselas, Simon Norfolk, John Roberts, Julian Stallabrass and Alberto Toscano. Lawyer Rupert Grey was a discussant. Supported by Oxford Art Journal, Oxford University Press, the Open University and the British?Council.

September Presentations

Posted at 11:30 am Leiden

The talk, portfolio reviews, book signings are already over at Bursa in Turkey, though the exhibition is still going on.
The talk later today at 4:05 pm at Pieterskerk in Leiden, Netherlands and the talk at 9:30 am on Monday the 24th September at CUNY, New York, USA, are sadly not public events, but the following talk in Delhi, India is:

as is the discussion at the United Art Fair:

?Photography Today: Photography and its Social Effects??on 29th?September from 11:00 am ? 1:30 pm, with Pablo Bartholomew and Deepak John Mathew.

Career Workshop: Photography & Videography as Tools for Citizen Journalism

Career Workshop

Photography & Videography as Tools for Citizen Journalism?

Date: 30 August, 2012

Venue: Conference Room?

Programme Schedule?

2:30 pm????????? ??????????? ??????????? Registration
3.00 pm????????? ??? ??????????????????? Opening Remarks
Jamil Ahmed
Chief Executive, JATRI?
3.15 pm??????????????????? ?????????????
Session for Shahidul Alam, world renowned photographer and Principal of Pathshala South Asian Media Institute.?
5:30 pm ???????? ??????????????????????? Questions & Answer session?
6:00 pm ???????????????????????????????? Closing Remarks
Arnob Chakrabarty
Head of Department
Broadcast and Multimedia
Pathshala South Asian Media Institute ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

The Barefoot College


In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men — many of them illiterate — to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It’s called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.

USA events: Book launch, artist's talk, lecture

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Book launch at Rizzoli Book Store

Talk at Busboys & Poets

Skira, Bengal Foundation and Busboys & Poets cordially invite you to a book signing for:?Shahidul Alam “My Journey as a Witness” edited by Rosa Maria Falvo
Friday, November 11, 6:30 – 8:00 pm
Busboys & Poets
1025 5th Street Northwest
Washington D.C. 20001
+1(202)789-2227
Dr. Alam will be delighted to sign copies purchased during the event
——————————————————————————

Lecture at Georgetown University

Cultural Diplomacy
Monday November 14th 11:30 am
St. ?Mary?s ?120. ?Best ?access is ?Reservoir ?Road, ?hospital ?entrance ?#1. ?St. Mary?s is on the left. ?You ?can ?park on the street, ?or ?go to the ?Georgetown ?parking lot in the Leavey Center. ?Just ?keep ?going ?from ?entrance ?one to ?the ?garage.

Interview at NPR:

Every weekday for over three decades, NPR’s Morning Edition has taken?listeners around the country and the world with two hours of multi-faceted stories and commentaries that inform, challenge and occasionally amuse. stories and commentaries that inform, challenge and occasionally amuse. Morning Edition is the most listened-to news radio program in the USA. Shahidul Alam will be interviewed by Morning Edition. Contact Salma Hasan Ali for details:

PopTech 2011 Interview:

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PopTech 2011 Interview: Shahidul Alam on photography for change

Lindsay Borthwick?(?BIO / ??POSTS )??|??Friday, October 21, 2011 UTC
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Shahidul Alam walked on stage on Thursday wearing a marigold-colored salwar kameez, a camera over his left shoulder, and a beltpack slung around his hips. There was no mistaking his calling. The Bangladeshi photographer, activist and social entrepreneur has almost single-handedly rebalanced the world of photojournalism, long dominated by Western photographers and their worldview. He has shifted its lens eastward and southward by training legions of photographers in his homeland, creating an award-winning photo agency to sell their work and founding a prestigious international photography festival to showcase their talent. And this fall, he published a book,?My Journey as a Witness, telling the story of Bangladeshi photography as an instrument of social justice. He serves as an ambassador of this movement, in the words of PopTech?s executive director, Andrew Zolli, ?travelling the world leaving new cultures of art makers in his wake.? We sat down with Alam backstage in Camden, Maine.
PopTech: You founded?Drik, a photo agency, and the?Chobi MelaInternational Festival of Photography. Why did you feel it was important for Bangladeshi photographers, as well as their peers, to have these outlets for their work?
Shahidul Alam: Firstly, it was a question of addressing this very distorted perception people have of what I call the ?majority world? countries. Our poverty is a reality, but that is not the only identity that we have. Secondly, I wanted to challenge a very unidirectional form of storytelling that has — to a large extent — been propagated by the West. The richness and diversity of human life gets lost in a very agenda-led information distribution system. So that was the beginning.
We also wanted to celebrate our own culture. It?s not that I am against white, Western photographers producing work in Bangladesh — I think our ideas need to be challenged just as much. It?s the monopoly of dissemination that I was against. So we wanted to create a space for diversity — for both Western work and our own work. That?s where the Chobi Mela festival came in — to facilitate that cultural infusion.
Continue reading “PopTech 2011 Interview:”

From the Lions Point Of View

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By Peter Marshall

From the blog >Re Photo

?Isn?t it a thrill to have him here in London? said the woman behind me to a friend as we we all waited, hardly an empty seat in the small lecture area of National Geographics?s Regent St first floor, and the next hour or so listening to Shahidul Alam talking, showing pictures and answering questions certainly justified her anticipation.
? 2011, Peter Marshall
Probably most of us in the audience had some idea of the incredible transformation Dr Alam has made to the world of photography, not just in his native Bangladesh but worldwide, although so much still remains to be done, but I think all of us found there was even more to him – and his family – than we had been previously aware.
Alam?s mother in particular was a formidable woman; determined to get a university education despite the opposition of her mother-in-law to the education of women, she left home every morning in a burkha ?going to visit friends? and went to study. Armed with her degree she dedicated herself to the education of women, and having found little backing for her project, bought a tent and used it to set up her own school for girls.
Later too we heard that his father had dared to evade the ?invitation? sent to him along with the other leading intellectuals of the country to take tea with the occupying Pakistani generals in 1971 just a few days before the end of the war. It was a story accompanied by a picture by Rashid Talukdar of a severed head in rubble, from the killing fields of Rayerbazar. Altogether more than a thousand teachers, journalists, doctors, lawyers, artists, writers and engineers were massacred.
Continue reading “From the Lions Point Of View”

Public talk at National Geographic

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When the lions find their storytellers: A public talk by Dr Shahidul Alam
October 4th, 6 p.m.
National Geographic Store
83-97 Regent Street
London
Internationally renowned Bangladeshi photographer, writer, curator and teacher Dr Shahidul Alam, will lead a free public talk at the National Geographic Store next week.
During the 40 minute talk Dr Alam, a National Geographic juror and photographer, will discuss his 30 year career in documentary photography, as well as his role as one of the most respected photography educators in the world.
Dr Alam?s work in establishing networks for photography and media professionals in his native Bangladesh has opened up the medium to an entirely new generation of artists. As a result, Bangladesh now has the highest number of documentary photographers in the world, some of whom, thanks to his efforts, are becoming internationally acclaimed. Alam founded the award-winning Drik Picture Library (www.drik.net) in 1989; the Bangladesh Photographic Institute in 1990; Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography – considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world – (www.pathshala.net) and ?Chobi Mela? (www.chobimela.org), a biennial international festival of photography, which is held in the capital, Dhaka. Alam’s most recent project is the founding of Majority World, a photo agency dedicated to providing a platform for non-Western photographers.
A jury member of numerous competitions including World Press Photo, for which he has been a judge on four occasions and recently the first non-Western person to chair the international jury, Alam was also the first Asian recipient of the prestigious Mother Jones Award for Documentary Photography. His work has been exhibited internationally, including: the MOMA, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Royal Albert Hall, London; and The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Tehran.
Dr Alam’s week-long visit to the UK is a result of his first retrospective photography exhibition at the Wilmotte Gallery at Lichfield Studios (http://www.tristanhoare.co.uk/) from 5th October -18 November, and the release of his forthcoming book, SHAHIDUL ALAM: My Journey as a Witness, published by Skira, Milan, and edited by Rosa Maria Falvo. The book will be launched at the Grand Hyatt Churchill Hotel in London at 5.30 pm.