Photographer, journalist, and human rights activist Shahidul Alam examines the issue of the increasing number of extra-judicial killings in Bangladesh.
In 2004 the Bangladesh government created a new armed enforcement agency, The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), in response to a perceived law and order crisis. From early days RAB became notorious for the number of people killed, allegedly during gun battles, because were caught in the ‘crossfire’.
Shahidul Alam’s Crossfire project was first shown in Bangladesh in 2010 to draw attention to these killings. The government responded by shutting down the show. Eventually, facing a court ruling in favour of Alam, the government backed down and the show was reopened for a day.
Alam is now working on a Bangladesh-wide tour of the show in collaboration with grassroots human rights organisations.
About Shahidul Alam
A photographer, writer, curator and activist, Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry at London University before switching to photography. He returned to his hometown Dhaka in 1984, where he photographed the democratic struggle to remove General Ershad A former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the award winning Drik agency, the Bangladesh Photographic Institute and Pathshala, the South Asian Media Academy, considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world. He is the Director of the Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography and chairman of the Majority World photo agency.
Alam’s work has been exhibited in galleries such as MOMA in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Tehran. A guest curator of the National Art Gallery in Malaysia and the Brussels Biennale, Alam’s numerous photographic awards include the Mother Jones and the Andrea Frank Awards.
Alam has been a speaker at Harvard, Stanford and UCLA universities in US; Oxford and Cambridge universities in the UK; museums such as Tate Modern in the UK and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. He has been a jury member in prestigious international contests, including World Press Photo, which he chaired and Prix Pictet, chaired by Kofi Annan.
An Honorary Fellow of the Bangladesh Photographic Society and the Royal Photographic Society, Alam is a visiting professor of Sunderland University in the UK. He is on the advisory board of the National Geographic Society and the Eugene Smith Fund. Alam is also an active blogger and on the international jury 2012 for the “Best of Blogs” contest organised by Deutsche Welle.
Alam has worked extensively on human rights issues and set up Bangla rights the human rights portal of Bangladesh. His recent work “Crossfire” on extra judicial killings, received worldwide coverage. The provocative show was closed down by the Bangladeshi government, but reopened after Alam challenged the government in court. He is now working on a countrywide tour of the show in collaboration with grassroots human rights organisations.
His recent book My Journey as a witness has been published by the Italian fine art publisher Skira and listed in the “Best Photo Books of the year 2011” compilation by American Photo Magazine. John Godfrey Morris the former picture editor of Life Magazine has called it “the most important book ever written by a photographer”. Alam is currently establishing archives on the 1971 war of liberation of Bangladesh and setting up a rural visual journalism network in the country.
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