Archiving and editing are perhaps the two least glamorous activities in the life cycle of a photographer’s work. And yet without these two (and much of the time we havebeen without these on the subcontinent) works are lost to us much earlier than is necessary. They often also lose their power; without a great edit, a set of images can remain just that, static in a waiting room, paused with no purpose.
“Transition” is a fitting theme for the upcoming edition of Chobi Mela, one that aligns with the evolution of Bangladesh’s art scene as a whole. Photography in the country has enacted a momentous evolution in recent years from a medium mainly oriented towards documentation to a much broader endeavour. The festival’s past edition was pivotal for that development. Curated by a multidisciplinary team with diverse backgrounds,[1] Chobi Mela VIII brought to the fore experimental photographic approaches which were often informed by other artistic practices. The choice to organise Chobi Mela’s first ever fellowship programme during this year’s edition must be read as a continuation of that drive.
Nasir Ali Mamun, one of Chobi Mela IX’s featured artists, is interviewed by Nabil Rahman. He talks about working through rejection, and the importance of persistence and how it is necessary in creative work.
When asked why I had come to Dhaka for Chobi Mela VIII, the only answer I could give was that my curiosity had gotten the better of me.
As a human rights specialist, the strong, socially-engaged photography coming out of Bangladesh had captured my attention in recent years. Indeed, at a certain moment, it suddenly seemed that Bangladesh was producing a disproportionate percentage of the world’s finest emerging photographers. Why was this?
It is difficult to write about someone whose work you love so much and question endlessly. Individuals like Shirin Neshat, Nan Goldin and Marina Abramovic steal your heart and soul, stretch your limit of core, and leave you empty – awestruck. They create magic, a poetry with their fragility and make you submit; make you pick your fragile self up to ‘be’. When you wake up to your usual banal world everything seems petty, and you feel tiny in the grand narrative of life. That’s the kind of impact I had when I stumbled upon Neshat’s work in 2007. Since then I have been tracing her foot print left on the web and in the galleries to understand her journey. Her ontological positions were beautifully translated into her work which is bound to grow on a keen audience.
There is no denying that we live in the age of selfies. Whether we share these photographs with the world on Instagram, Facebook, flick or twitter, we capture them, often, not just to hold on to a joyful moment but, if I may assume, to see a reflection of our inner self projected on to the lens bringing out whatever emotions the external surrounding or internal thoughts trigger at that particular moment.
Being the founding member of Britto Arts Trust, an alternate space for arts and experiments, you have worked with a hodgepodge of art forms and artists, even assuming different roles like being a curator at times and a visual artist at other times. But, whichever roles you have acquired, they consistently involved more than one art form or genre. We can’t help but ask – how do you feel about being a guest curator of Chobi Mela, a medium-centric festival where content mostly revolves around photography?
Being the founding member of Britto Arts Trust, an alternate space for arts and experiments, you have worked with a hodgepodge of art forms and artists, even assuming different roles like being a curator at times and a visual artist at other times. But, whichever roles you have acquired, they consistently involved more than one art form or genre. We can’t help but ask – how do you feel about being a guest curator of Chobi Mela, a medium-centric festival where content mostly revolves around photography?
Each Chobi Mela offers another reason to further explore the realms of photography and to define new heights for the festival itself. When a tag like ‘Asia’s largest international festival of photography’ or ‘the world’s most demographically inclusive festival’ bestows itself upon Chobi Mela, it only heightens the world’s expectations of us. To live up to these expectations, we reach out to people who can help us make the festival better. And Salauddin Ahmed, notable Bangladeshi architect, is one such person acting as a guest curator for Chobi Mela VIII.
13 January 2001 was my walima (wedding reception). The night before the walima, sometime around eleven o’ clock, suddenly my phone rang. A friend of mine on the other side said, “Come to Drik”. I was surprised to hear that “1971 The War We Forgot”- the exhibition- had been shifted to Drik from the National Museum. My beautiful wife asked, “Where are you going? Why do you have to go at this time of the night?”.