Old Dhaka
by Abdul Munem Wasif, Bangladesh
Winner of the F25 Award
Second annual (2008)
Project description
Puran Dhaka, or Old Dhaka, was a rather unlikely subject. For it existed all around me. I live here. It was almost trying to find the unseen within the everyday. Old Dhaka had made me appreciate properly cooked greasy food, the sleaziest of slang, and it is where I had come to rediscover the same small town pulse of holding on to things than letting go. My own childhood years in Comilla, a small district town surrounded by mostly rural settings and steep with customs and old world lifestyle, had made me not just appreciate but rather feel at home with relations which emboldened from the duration of time spent and bordered on tradition more than trend. But through the frames, my Old Dhaka started to divulge unseen lives and to throw back at me nostalgic memories of my childhood.
Abdul Munem Wasif
Author's biography
Abdul Munem Wasif is a documentary photographer born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1983. A graduate of Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, Wasif began his career as a feature photographer for the Daily Star, a leading English language daily in Bangladesh. Thereafter he worked for two years with DrikNEWS (an international photographic news agency) as a staff photographer. In 2007, he was selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in the Netherlands. He won an "Honorable Mention" in the All Roads Photography Program by the National Geographic Society for his extensive work on Old Dhaka and he recently obtained the 2008 Young Reporter of Perpignan Award. His work is exhibited worldwide including Anchor photo festival in Cambodia, International Photography Biennial of the Islamic World in Iran, Fotofreo- festival of photography in Australia, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Japan and Getty image gallery in England. He is currently represented by Agency VU' in Paris and, since September 2008, he is part of Fabrica's Photography Department.
September 2008
Download press release (PDF - 20 kb) English
Download press release (PDF - 22 kb) Italiano
