Image of the Day
Specially curated
365 Days, 365 Images
of National/International
Photographers
An Image a Day
Let us engage with this
Fascinating Medium that
Breaks all boundaries
Dal Lake © Shahidul Alam, Kashmir India, 2008 | Image source internet
Shahidul Alam
Democracy is a messy, elusive entity. Keeping that entity alive is very important. The struggle for democracy is a struggle for freedom.
– Shahidul Alam
Shahidul Alam (born 1955) is a Bangladeshi Photographer, writer, curator and human rights activist. Alam founded the Drik Picture Library in 1989, the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka in 1998, “which has trained hundreds of photographers”, and the Chobi Mela International Photography Festival in 1999. His books include Nature’s Fury (2007) and My Journey as a Witness (2011).
He obtained a PhD in Chemistry from London University before taking up photography. Returning to his hometown Dhaka in 1984, he documented the democratic struggle to remove General Ershad. President of the Bangladesh Photographic Society for three terms, Alam set up the Drik agency; Bangladesh Photographic Institute; Chobi Mela festival; Majority World agency and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. A new media pioneer, Alam introduced email to Bangladesh in the early 1990s.
His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris and Tate Modern, London. He has been a guest curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Fotomuseum Wintherthur, Switzerland; National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Brussels Biennial and the Auckland Festival of Photography. His awards include the Shilpakala Padak, the highest cultural award given to Bangladeshi artists, a Lucie Award and the ICP Award. Time magazine named Alam as one of their ‘Persons of the Year’ in 2018.
Alam has written and edited several publications including My Journey as a Witness in 2011. His exhibition, Kalpana’s Warriors, was shown at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2015 in Malta, and Best Years of my Life was shown at the Global Forum on Migration and Development in Berlin in 2017.
A speaker at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge universities, Alam has been a jury member for the Prix Pictet and World Press Photo, which he chaired. Alam is a visiting professor of Sunderland University and an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.
Published on March 31, 2021
See All Image of the Day | 365 days, 365 images
Share
Related Posts
Ethiopia Project | David Goldman
David Goldman is an American photographer. A 1998 graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in Spanish, Goldman’s first job was as a staff photographer at the weekly North County Independent newspaper, in Rhode Island.
Kuda et Sky II | Nick Brandt, Kenya 2020
Nick Brandt (born 1964) is an English photographer. The themes in Nick Brandt’s photographic series always relate to the destructive impact that humankind is having on both the natural world and now humans themselves too.
Untitled Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt Photography
Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt (1947-2015) was a Belgian photographer. He co-founded Agence VU’ with Christian Caujolle in 1986. He is represented by the Gallery Camera Obscura in Paris. Belonging to the tradition of reportage and the “decisive moment”, his works have been widely published. His personal works include Belgian competitions and Immigrants in his country.
Untitled | Jean-Marie Donat
Jean-Marie Donat (born in 1962) lives and works in Paris where he runs the independent creative editorial agency AllRight. For over 35 years he has been gathering a vast photographic collection of vernacular photographs focused on delivering a singular reading of the 20th century.
Acts of Appearance | Gauri Gill, 2015
Gauri Gill (born 1970) is an Indian photographer who lives in New Delhi. Gill earned a BFA (Applied Art) from the College of Art, New Delhi; BFA (Photography) from Parsons School of Design/The New School, New York and MFA (Art) from Stanford University, California.
Cuba by Raúl Cañibano
Raúl Cañibano Ercilla is based in Havana. He was born in 1961. One of the younger generation of photographers born after the Revolution, his work focuses on people, everyday life, history and socialism. He has exhibited world-wide and won a major prize in Cuba for a project on the life of rural workers.