Шахидул Алам: Жизнь и творчество бангладешского фотожурналиста

Bangladeshi photojournalist

Shahidul Alam (born 1955) is a Bangladeshi photojournalist, public speaker, storyteller, writer, curator, blogger, and educationist. An institution builder, Alam founded the Drik Picture Library in 1989, the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in 1998, the Chobi Mela International Photography Festival in 1999, and Majority World agency in 2007. He introduced email to Bangladesh in early 90's. He developed Bangladesh's first webzine and first portal. His books include Nature's Fury (2007) and My Journey as a Witness (2011). A photographer for over forty years, his work has been featured in leading publications across the globe and exhibited in MOMA, Centre Pompidou, and the Tate Modern. He has spoken at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities. Alam has sat on the International Jury of World Press Photo and was the first Asian chair. Alam was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2001. In 2014, he was awarded the Shilpakala Padak by the President of Bangladesh and in 2018 the Humanitarian Award from the Lucie Awards. He was a Time magazine persons of the year in 2018. He was the CASE Humanitarian of the Year in 2021. He is a National Geographic Explorer at Large. In 2022, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Arts in London.

Kazi Shahidul Alam was born in Dacca, East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh) in 1955 and grew up at Dhanmondi. He was one of the three children of physician Kazi Abul Monsur and child psychologist Anwara Monsur. He belongs to the Kazi family of Rajapur in Faridpur district. This family was founded by Kazi Abdur Rasool, son of Shah Azimuddin, who was said to have been descended from the Arab Muslim general Khalid ibn al Walid and have been appointed as Kazi in Mughal Bengal. In his childhood, he used to float through Dhaka's congested arteries atop his slight fold up bicycle. He studied at the boarding school Jhenidah Cadet College. Alam took his undergraduate education in the University of Liverpool. During his time in Liverpool, he made a habit of walking in the streets in his lungi, a traditional South Asian garment. In his college year, he was introduced to activism through his involvement with the Socialist Workers Party. Alam relocated to London for his Doctor of Philosophy study at Bedford College, University of London. Alam started to take an interest in photograph during his time in London. At Bedford, he also worked as a research chemist to invent alternative printing processes for photographs. In 1983, he won the Harvey Harris Trophy from London Arts Council for a photograph that he took. This boosted his confidence in pursuing a career in photography.

In 1989, he set up Drik Picture Library and in 1998, Pathshala South Asian Institute of Photography (later Pathshala South Asian Media Institute), in Dhaka. Pathshala "has trained hundreds of photographers". Alam set up the South Asian Media Academy.

Crossfire is a series of photographs taken by Alam. The exhibition was curated by Peruvian art critic and curator Jorge Villacorta, a colleague of Alam. The exhibition was completed in 2010 and displayed at Drik Gallery in Dhaka. The photographs show locations and objects where extrajudicial killings happened because of Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). RAB was established in 2004 as a paramilitary force to combat gangsters and thugs in the streets, but in late 2007, the battalion was accused of over 350 extrajudicial killings and the torturing of hundreds more.

The closure by RAB and the local police of the 2010 exhibition titled Crossfire on the topic of extrajudicial killings sparked nationwide protests. After Drik's lawyers served legal notice on the government, the police barricade was removed. The response of the court and subsequent events enabled Drik to open the exhibition for public viewing on 31 March.

On 5 August 2018, David Bergman tweeted that Shahidul Alam had been taken from his home in Dhanmondi by 30 to 35 plainclothes police officers. This happened shortly after Alam, in a live interview with Al Jazeera, criticized the government's violent response to the 2018 Bangladesh road safety protests which he had been documenting via live videos on Facebook. Alam was believed to have been arrested for saying that the protests "stemmed from anger about widespread government corruption, and not just the bus accident that initially sparked them." He was shown arrested by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police the next day. Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists urged the Bangladeshi government to immediately release Alam without filing charges, as did Mumbai Press Club, Bombay News Photographer Association, Reporters Without Borders the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Prince Claus Fund and its network partners, Free Press Unlimited, and the World Press Photo Foundation, United Nations human rights experts, and the European Parliament. Amplified through the hashtag #FreeShahidulAlam, Alam received an outpouring of support from Nobel Laureates, authors, fellow photographers, artists, intellectuals, friends and family. The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organisation issued a statement that was signed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi, Tawakkol Karman, Richard Branson, Richard Curtis, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Óscar Arias Sánchez, José Manuel Ramos Horta, and Gro Harlem Brundtland amongst others. This was an adaptation from a letter posted a day earlier on Twitter by Hollywood star Sharon Stone which also included signatories such as Jimmy Wales. A joint statement by leading British artists and curators was signed amongst others by Anish Kapoor, Akram Khan, and Steve McQueen. A World Press Photo statement released 100 days into his detention was signed amongst others by Romila Thapar and Salima Hashmi. Separate statements were issued by Urvashi Butalia, Abdul Sattar Edhi's son Faisal Edhi, Angela Y. Davis, Vijay Prashad, Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky. As many as 426 academics from various universities in Australia urged the Government of Bangladesh to release him immediately. In Dhaka, on October 16, around 100 photographers formed a human chain at the base of Raju Memorial Sculpture under the banner of “Shahidul Alam Er Muktir Dabitey Alokchitribrindo”. On the other hand, Sajeeb Wazed, the son of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, questioned those defending and demanding freedom of Alam in a controversial Facebook post. Alam has recounted some of his experiences in his reply to Arundhati Roy's open letter addressed to him while he was in jail. After 107 days of imprisonment, Alam was granted bail by Bangladesh High Court and released on 20 November 2018. He has challenged the legality of the Section 57 of the ICT act with the Bangladesh Supreme Court after his challenge was rejected by Bangladesh High Court.

On March 4, 2019, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police revoked an invitation for Arundhati Roy’s talk scheduled as part of the 10th edition of Chobi Mela International Photography Festival. After 24 hours of uncertainty, the organizers of Chobi Mela finally held her talk with Shahidul Alam at an alternative venue.

On 21 November 2023, authorities from the German cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, and Heidelberg, where the photography exhibition Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie’s 10th edition was set to take place in March 2024, canceled the event because Alam's criticism of the Israeli Occupying Forces' assault on Palestinians in Gaza was deemed "anti semitic". The Biennale’s board and the three cities’ mayors of cultural affairs, in agreement with the longstanding main sponsor BASF, decided that Alam’s social media activity since 7 October 2023 meant that the Biennale could not go ahead. Alam stated that the Biennale had "incorrectly equated" his social media activity "to antisemitism”. “We feel that the failure to draw a distinction between criticism of a government and of a peoples, is irresponsible and damaging to the honesty of public discourse,” he said. Alam told Al Jazeera: “I am an anti Zionist which means I am against colonialism, settler colonialism, against racism, against apartheid and genocide. I am not an anti Semite, and it’s most unfortunate that Germany chooses to conflate the two, [as this] serves and furthers the white supremacist agenda.” In retrospect the cancellation of the Biennale marked the start of a new era of German repression.

Nature's Fury. Hibrida; London: Concern Worldwide, 2007. Text in English and Urdu. Portraits of Commitment. UNAIDS, 2009. My Journey as a Witness. Skira, 2011. Edited by Rosa Maria Falvo. 2012, Kochi Muziris Biennale, Kerala, India.

2010, Where Three Dreams Cross at Whitechapel Gallery, London.