Shahidul Alam is a Bangladeshi photojournalist, teacher and social activist. He has been a photographer for more than forty years and “his photographs have been published in almost every major western media outlet”.
Bangladesh –
Emaho got into a free-wheeling tête-à-tête with the legendary award-winning Bangladeshi photographer, Shahidul Alam to pry beyond his politics. This interview was conducted in the month of February, 2013 during the Chiang Mai Documentary Arts Festival, Thailand.
Manik : In all your past interviews, you have mentioned how photography happened to you, so I will not ask that question, but what is photography for you? And your relationship with politics?
Shahidul : I am a very political man and the reason I took up photography was because of my political position. Being concerned about the social situation in my country and globally, I happened to stumble into photography and discovered what a powerful tool it was; which happens to be the only reason why I practice it. I am fond of photography, I enjoyed images but at the end of the day that for me is not the point of the exercise. I continued to use photography in whatever way I can. Largely because, I see the strength of the medium and I recognise the potential. Having said that I think – I have said this before – that if tomorrow it ceases to effective, I’ll have no qualms about giving it up and taking something new.
That for me is the point of the exercise. And when I am talking of politics I am certainly not talking about party politics and looking at the social spectrum within which we live, where the rhetoric is about egalitarianism about social equality… but there does not happen to be a single government in the world that I know of right now that believes in that rhetoric …or at least practices that rhetoric …despite the fact that it espouses it constantly. So, I at one stage began to take stock and realised that the major changes in social terms were politics, media, education and culture. I am politically active, politically engaged, though I am not involved in party politics. But I insist upon working in all the other three areas to ensure that there is sufficient pressure upon the politicians, to ensure that people who are governed have a say in the process of governance.
