I guess I was always enthralled every time photography unfolded its mystery before me. I can clearly recall the day I first watched a slide projector working it’s charisma onto the white wall at our grandmother’s house. I was only three year old then. In those early days of my life going to a photo studio in Government New market in Dhaka city and sitting for a family portrait stimulated my excitements.
The instant fun of Polaroid film during the 80’s was like magic. At that tender age all this must have had a huge influence on me. But it wasn’t until the mid-nineties during my teen years that I first got hold of a cheap Russian camera and furiously started clicking away rolls of locally available black and white negative films. But I truly felt the push for a new turn in my life during the spring of 2004, when I first came across Chobi Mela, an International festival of photography in Bangladesh. I was struck as I watched a busy crowed listening to a critic in a photography workshop during the festival. It was the biennale’s third edition, under a theme all the major galleries in Dhaka were showing works of photographers from around the world.
That photo festival in 2004 changed the way I am today, like chain reaction the following year I quit my job at the advertising agency I worked for and went freelance and started playing around with my camera again, the next year I made the big move and enrolled in a graduation program on photography at Pathshala, thus I started a new career as a photographer.
In this amazing photography school I have learned to see things in a completely new way; I realized that thoughts and ideas could be expressed through photography, emotions could be transferred and stories could be told.
My methods of image making have evolved over the years. As I discovered myself more by taking photos I opened up my wounds, forgotten memories and confessions to photography itself, and have found new grounds to walk on, and new hopes to drive for.
Shumon Ahmed
Chobi Mela – International Festival of Photography
January 25 to February 7, 2013
House 58, Road 15A (New),
Dhanmondi, Dhaka 1209
Bangladesh
