A ROCK IN A HARD PLACE

A new retrospective puts on display Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam's grit and iconoclasm

- Shreevatsa Nevatia

Alam's work reminds us with sledgehammer force that HISTORY. MUCH LIKE a cliche, repeats itself again and again

SHAHIDUL ALAM'S AFFINITY with Kolkata runs deep. His parents lived and got married here. The acclaimed photojournalist came to the city shortly after Bangladesh was liberated in 1971: "We saw three films a day and went to every concert we could fit in." Crucially, many of the artists, philosophers, poets and activists the 67-year-old admires all have a Kolkata link. It seems only fitting that Singed but Not Burnt, Alam's first Asian retrospective, has come here before curator Ina Puri travels the country with it. This city is no stranger to revolution, and Alam's work hits home with the force of a sledgehammer.

Alam took to photography by accident. While he was on a hitchhiking trip in the US, a friend asked Alam to buy him a camera. "He didn't have the money, so I got stuck with it," Alam tells INDIA TODAY over email. The photographer's early work-nudes, photos of forests and swans-sees him use his Nikon FM to frame beauty, mostly radically but, sometimes, also conventionally. The photos he takes as a chemistry doctoral student in London seem more concerned with aesthetics, while the pictures he makes on his return to Bangladesh, especially those from the late '80s, demand a new ethic.