Torn

‘Torn’ explores the minds of patients in Bangladesh during the Covid-19 outbreak. I researched on newspaper images of peoples’ suffering in hospitals, collected them, and reconstructed these situations in a pop-up studio at home, situations which are absent in mainstream media. Mainstream media homogenises, it does not attempt to delve into peoples’ sufferings, I have viewed it differently, using the technique of stage photography to express peoples’ anxieties.
Peoples’ lives are wrought by multiple layers of problems including social negligence, food crisis, and domestic violence, aggravated by growing fear and anxiety about the spread of virus. The world after Covid-19 will probably not be the same as before, the ‘new normal’ perhaps, will defy what is expected. ‘Torn’ is also personal, it attempts to be a testament, a collective memory of personal moments during the pandemic, moments that are unexplainable, at times, psychosomatic.

Salma Abedin Prithi’s photographs explore the vulnerability and psychological struggles of common people. After graduating in photography from the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Prithi started making portraits of ordinary people with performative gestures in her pop-up studio at home. Her work, ‘Mundane’, is a combination of tableau-vivant and archival footages of newspapers exploring domestic violence in Bangladesh. She was the recipient of the Social Justice fellowship, Magnum Foundation in 2019 and Joop Swart Masterclass, World Press Photo in 2020.