“It is the person who controls the narrative that determines which story gets told”, said Shahidul Alam. As a Bangladeshi, as also a South Asian, Alam realised early on in his photography career, that the reigns of this visual medium lay firmly in the hands of the West – largely Europe and America. Stories from the so-called Third World or the ‘Majority World’ as Alam dubs it, fell within the exoticised and predetermined frameworks set by the Western eye. When Alam returned home to Dhaka in the mid 1980s, with a PhD in organic chemistry from London University, his choice of career was clear. Convinced that Bangladesh didn’t need yet another chemist, he chose to pursue photography instead, using it as a tool to reverse set power structures in both politics and society.
Changing the narrative
Veteran photographer and Alam’s contemporary Dayanita Singh, recalls her time as a photojournalist in the 1990s, when international media covered Bangladesh only if there was a flood and even then, only if the death toll had risen over 500. “Shahidul Alam changed all of that forever,” she affirms. In stark contrast to the sought after, “aerial shots of marooned people and bloated bodies,” stood Alam’s simple yet telling image of a single wicker basket, containing all the belongings of a family affected by the 1988 floods, that he documented. Going a step further, he juxtaposed images of people grappling with the crisis against a lavish wedding that took place simultaneously, highlighting the class disparity in Bangladeshi society. His images of cyclone-hit Bangladesh in 1991, told stories of resilience and hope, showing villagers rebuilding their homes and fishermen fixing their boats — a radical shift from the hitherto negative imagery of poverty and desolation assigned to the region.
Alam’s role as change-maker extends beyond his own work as a self-reflective photographer. For a country with abysmal literacy rates, he believed in nurturing visual literacy to help the misrepresented with a language to author their own stories. Setting up the Drik Picture Library (1989), a multi-media agency that promotes work by local image-makers, he followed it up with both — the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute (1998), commonly known as Pathshala, the first ever school of photography in South Asia and Chobi Mela (2000), an international festival for photography. Within a short span of a decade, Bangladesh found itself on the global map of photography.
“No one has been able to come close to such a contribution to the medium, to photographers, in India even,” states Singh. As an educator, Alam has carried forward his pedagogical lineage inherited from his mother — a teacher. As a catalyst for change, he has constantly pushed for greater representation of voices from the subcontinent, every chance he got. “Shahidul’s generosity knows no borders”, relates photographer Sohrab Hura, whom Alam nominated for three consecutive years for the Joop Swart Masterclass. Hura, now the second Indian to be an associate with the global agency, Magnum Photos, fondly recollects Alam’s message, “When I was finally accepted on my third attempt, I immediately received a message from him saying, ‘We did it!’”, something that meant the world to a young aspiring photographer.
Building community
For scores of students from South Asia, who found a school of international repute in their neighbourhood, Pathshala became a beacon of hope and an affordable one at that, in comparison to its foreign counterparts. As Kolkata/Mumbai based Krishanu Nagar, who studied at Pathshala in 2014-15 relates, “It was evident that some of the best photographers from this part of the world were students or teachers there. And having seen the work being produced by them, I realised they weren’t afraid to experiment and push the boundaries of photography.” For Mumbai-based Aishwarya Arumbakkam, who studied at Pathshala, (2015-2016), “… [It] created a safe environment where I could question, explore, push and create. It allowed me take chances and make discoveries I wouldn’t have otherwise.” Though, it’s Arumbakkam’s claim that’s unanimously agreed upon by all associated with the school — “Pathshala gave us the inexplicable value and beauty in growing as a community.”
This is the biggest takeaway for veteran photographer Prashant Panjiar, who has known Alam closely since the 1980s. Attending Chobi Mela in 2011, Panjiar shares, “That’s where we learnt the power of a community,” without which, he reasons, “…it would just be a festival [put up] by an event management company.” Applying these insights to the Delhi Photo Festival (DPF) founded soon after, Panjiar consciously left all presentations “raw and unfinished” à la Chobi Mela, so they looked less professionally handled and more the shared efforts of a community.
Blurring boundaries
Teaching photography to the masses through workshops for children from the working classes, Alam’s efforts focus on empowerment through education and access. These ideals reflect in the way Chobi Mela functions as well. “If people can’t go to the gallery, then the gallery has to come to them,” believes Alam. This reinstates Chobi Mela’s importance as a public festival that welcomes the layperson, not a closed one held within fancy galleries. “Starting from the street march, a metaphor rooted in Bangladesh’s young history, to the curated exhibitions spread across the city, to the series of talks and panel discussions by invited photographers, curators and publishers, workshops and portfolio reviews, to long street walks, and cycle-rickshaw rides, to informal discussions over meals, [Chobi Mela] became a memorable and enriching experience for all of us,” shares Rishi Singhal, head of photography design at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, who attended Chobi Mela VIII (2015). The result: students from both NID and Pathshala benefit greatly from a rich exchange program that Singhal and Alam devised, surmounting political differences, bureaucratic procedures and paucity of funding to support students on both sides.
Ironically, after a three-decade long strife for an egalitarian society, Alam today at 63, finds himself a prisoner of state for raising his voice in support of students demanding a safer world. As a social activist at heart, Alam has faced detainment and assaults as serious as eight stab wounds during anti-government protests in 1996. Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati from photo.circle— a platform for photography in Nepal, sees Alam as both mentor and friend. Often wondering about “…what it takes, especially in our economic and cultural contexts, to do the work we do – build institutions and make them work, every day, over time, through resource crunches and political strife and heartache. It takes courage and perseverance to keep doing and introspecting and re-calibrating.” Going by that, it would mean that for Alam the fight continues.
Visit pathshala.org to know more about Shahidul Alam’s work