What is common between the images of two burning trucks in collision and the condition of workers in a local tobacco factory or limbs of a dead corpse? Each image has a story of its own to tell and stimulate powerful emotions in the mind of the observers. Four young photographers Debashish Shom, Sarker Pratik, Shumon Ahmed and Sayed Asif Mahmud have been brought together by Bengal Art Lounge to hold a group exhibition with their images capturing diverse subjects.
The exhibition titled Limbo is being housed in the organiser’s gallery in Gulshan. Noted photographer and cinematographer Anwar Hossain inaugurated the exhibition as the chief guest on June 14.
About 79 images are on display; most of them are formidable and compel attention. You can expect drastic changes in your thoughts and senses as you move from the works of one photographer to the next. Everything mundane and monotonous, you can forget about them as you take a tour around the gallery.
From the images displayed under the series In Midnight Black, it is not difficult to conclude that the photographer Sarkar Pratik is a night wanderer. He has arrested other nocturnal beings like an insane woman standing on a bridge in the dead of the night, a stray dog gazing at an empty street, and an abandoned car atop a flyover.
‘I fell in love with the night as I wandered on the empty streets of the town. Through my camera, I caught objects that have no relation to me, yet somehow I felt momentarily connected in the midnight blue,’ Sarkar Protik revealed regarding choosing his subjects.
Anticipate an eerie sense of foreboding as you encounter Debashish Shom’s series titled Encounter unveiling parts of a corpse through four black and white frames. ‘To me, photography is the interpretation of my psychological and emotional state of mind,’ Shom explained about his creative thought process.
As you move across Shumon Ahmed’s series titled Destination, catch the travelling bug with the photographer and begin a journey that takes you through a road tunnel, halts at a rocky shoreline where you can imbibe nature’s grandeur and continue on your voyage unless you see a ship breaking yard. Not solely preoccupied with the role of a photographer, Ahmed fuses video, texts and photography for a visual exploration of his ideas and emotions. His creative works have also managed to find space at some of the renowned international photography festivals.
Witness the metamorphosis as green leaves are processed to brown, individuals are turned to toiling labour in a tobacco factory and the land transforms from lush to leathery as the documentary series Tobacco Tales by Sayed Asif Mahmud unfolds before you.
‘I sought to reveal the conditions of a tobacco factory where men, women and children toil to make a product which is the cause of a slow and painful death and a chief pollutant of the environment,’ Mahmud explains the motivation behind his documentary series.
The exhibition will continue till June 30.
-With New Age input
