Jahangirnagar University anthropologist Sayeed Ferdous (Partition as Border-Making, 2022) has argued that, to make the 1971 liberation war legible as the singular event that creates the meaning of Bangladesh, the 1947 Partition of British India has to disappear from shared memory. Mohaiemen’s Bengal Photography’s Reality Quest (2024) aimed for a partial corrective, bringing histories of realist photography from Bangladesh and West Bengal into dialogue. Yet this volume left out many strands, and a similar critique can be made of Mohaiemen’s earlier project, What Was Chobi Mela and What Comes Next (2019). Through an artist talk and conversation with Tanzim Wahab, Mohaiemen reflects on the necessity of fragmenting many histories— in Ahmed Safa’s words, “polyphony of the ocean.”
Land of a Thousand Cameras
Naeem Mohaiemen
Naeem Mohaiemen combines films, photography, and essays to research socialist utopias, malleable borders, and fragile families. In Bangladesh, he exhibited at Chobi Mela, Bengal Shilpalay, Abdur Razzaque Foundation, Latitude Longitude, Dhaka Art Summit, Asiatic Society, Gallery Chitrak, Bishaud Bangla, Mangalbarer Shabha, Bengal Architecture Symposium, Dhaka University, Jahangirnagar University, and Zahid Raihan Film Club.
He is the editor of Chittagong Hill Tracts in the Blind Spot of Bangladesh Nationalism (2010), and author of Prisoners of Shothik Itihash (2014), Midnight’s Third Child (2023), Baksho Rohoshyo (2024), and Bengal Photography’s Reality Quest (2025). British Council recently launched Midnight’s Third Child, a curatorial project on Bangladeshi arts as a “third space” by Kehkasha Sabah and Benjamin Cook, inspired by Mohaiemen’s book. Mohaiemen is also the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Visual Arts at Columbia University, New York.
Tanzim Wahab
Tanzim Wahab, a curator, researcher, and lecturer, has a history of leadership at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, having held the positions of Vice Principal and International Programme Director. He has served as the Director of the Research and Publication Department at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy and is currently the Director General at the Bangladesh National Museum.
His curatorial interests revolve around the sensory and community entanglement of cultural spaces, locational practice(s), and alternative art education. He also previously served as the festival Director of the Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography in Dhaka and as a curator and community facilitator for the Spore Initiative in Berlin. Between 2016 and 2021, he served as the Chief Curator of the Bengal Foundation, conducting several curatorial research projects and exhibitions across South Asia.