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Dhaka 2013: A force for change by Rupert Grey

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I met Shahidul just over 20 years ago, when Chobi Mela was just a twinkle in his Bangladeshi eye. It was another 7 years before it was to become the first photographic festival in a country where photography as a profession hardly existed.

We were on a fishing boat in the Sundarbans by the Bay of Bengal during the monsoon season. This black-bearded kurta-clad figure stood on the stern with 3 Nikons round his neck, as I had round mine. The election was on. Major Zia, a leader of the freedom-fighters in the 1971 War and something of a legend in Bangladesh, was standing for Parliament. Shahidul was covering his campaign, which was a colourful affair, and I was on a 6 month sabbatical with my wife Jan and 3 daughters, the youngest of whom was then 5.

The threat from pirates added to the excitement, and I heard later that pirates commandeered the boat the day we left. Yesterday the Daily Star reported on its front page that Zia had been wounded in a gunfight with pirates, but not before 4 of them had been killed.

Beneath his calm exterior Shahidul is on the go 20 hours a day in the lead-up to Chobi Mela. He said on Drik News a couple of days ago that he is in crisis management mode. What he didn’t say is that Bangladeshi crises are not like other crises. Like the proverbial London bus they all come at once. Unlike them, they also come all the time. To the untutored eye there are no solutions.

Since we arrived here last week there have been 2 hartals (what I call road-strikes: you can’t go anywhere save, at mild risk to life and limb, on a rickshaw), a petrol strike and a paper strike. Difficult to have a photographic festival without paper. Somehow the crises are managed out of the way. I once asked Shahidul how. “It’s a mystery”, he replied, with an ostensibly confident grin. The mystery is an art-form in itself. To an outsider it’s a miracle.

And Chobi Mela is a miracle. As a Bangladeshi business man remarked to me over dinner in London a few years ago, in a country where nothing is possible everything is possible. In a city of epic traffic jams, routine power-cuts and mind-bending bureaucratic hurdles Shahidul and his team of dedicated professionals produce exhibitions of powerful images on time in a dozen different locations
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I arrived last week and went straight to Drik, the nerve centre of photography in Dhaka. As always in the run up to Chobi Mela there was an air of excitement. Photographers arriving from far-flung places wanting to know about their prints, lecturers like me needing to know the programme, film-makers hoping to use the recording studio, journalists, sensing the eclectic magic of Chobi Mela, looking for a touchstone to light a story. It looks like chaos, but is a chaos you want to be a part of. The extraordinary thing is that out of this chaos emerges, if not quite order, a powerful force for change. It is this that marks Chobi Mela out from other festivals.

Shahidul always introduces me as a lawyer and photographer. This is alarming. I did once have an exhibition here, about 3 Chobi Mela’s ago – it was less competitive then – so I go along with it, but the standard here is high. The festival celebrates more than just images. It recognizes the power of photography to raise awareness and re-arrange perceptions. Many of the images are uncomfortable. They represent a young nation’s attempt to understand the enormity of the challenges it contends with, and they celebrate the passion which lies at the heart of this festival.

Bangladeshi photographers, many of whom were taught at Pathshala, the school of photography founded by Shahidul in the late 90’s, are in the vanguard of this movement. As the New York Times remarked last week, Chobi Mela bears witness to the remarkable transformation that is taking place within photography in Bangladesh.

It is easy to forget, in the urban madness of Dhaka, that this is also an extraordinarily beautiful country. I write this blog in on a balcony near Sylhet in northwest Bangladesh. The sun is rising over the Meghalayan hills and the rice-paddies are taking shape through the mist. So, too is Bangladesh, as it assumes its role as force for change in South-East Asia.

Rupert Grey, 22 January 2013

Chobi Mela – International Festival of Photography
January 25 to February 7, 2013
House 58, Road 15A (New),
Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1209
Bangladesh

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