Page 471 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

468 ART AND CRAFTS

9.2 Photojournalists: the Seventies
A number of talented photojournalists entered into their
professional lives in the seventies, after liberation. Pavel Rahman,
Samsul Islam Almajee, Monazat Uddin, Lutfur Rahman Binu,
Kazi Rownak Hossain, AKM Mohsin, Bulbul Ahmed are
noteworthy among the photojournalists of this period.
Samsul Islam Almajee (1945- )
Talented and socially conscious photographer Samsul Islam
Almajee worked with the Dainik Bangla and weekly Bichitra for
a prolonged period as a photojournalist. He also worked for the
French news agency AFP for some time. In his long expatriate life
in the USA from 1992-2003 he was involved in photography. His
intelligent and artistic treatment brought sharpness to the subject
and message of his photographs. Almajee ‘brilliantly captures the
agony and distress of hungry children and starved mothers, stark
reality of hungry dilated eyes and petrified life of rootless, landless
vagrants and destitutes is masterly [sic] frozen in many of his
work.’ 114 In 1979 he won the gold medal in the first national
photographic competition organized by BPS (pl. 10.3), in 1975 this successful artist
won the gold medal of the World Journalist Association for his photograph ‘Ebang
fig. 10.52 (top) Ebong Jehetu Manush Manush-i’ (And because humans are only humans) (fig.10.52).
Jehetu Manush Manush- Pavel Rahman (1956- )
i (and because humans Pavel Rahman is an accomplished and acclaimed photojournalist of post-liberation
are humans), 1975, Bangladesh. He has left the imprint of his merit as a photojournalist in various
Photograph Samsul weeklies and daily newspapers of the country since 1972 and has been working with
Islam Almajee, winning the international news agency ‘Associated Press’ (AP) since 1988. In the last two
the World Journalist decades during his service with AP many photographs of Bangladesh have been
Association gold medal greatly appreciated with his intelligent and creative presentation. In the second
© Samsul Islam Almajee
national photography exhibition organized by the Shilpakala Academy in 1986 his
fig. 10.53 (bottom) photograph ‘Mahamilan’ won the gold medal (fig. 10.53). He gained international
Mahamilon (the great fame for his striking photographs of the vulnerable survivors of the cyclone that hit
reunion), the meeting of the coastal areas of Chittagong in 1991. He was the first Bangladeshi photojournalist
husband and wife after to go abroad on an assignment (the
the devastating cyclone, funeral of Rajiv Gandhi) on behalf
photograph Pavel of a foreign organization. The
Rahman, winning the historical photograph of the
gold medal at the martyred Noor Hossain with
second National ‘Ganatantra Mukti Pak’ (Let
Photography Exhibition democracy be free) written on his
organized by the back on 10 November 1987 during
Bangladesh Shilpakala the anti-autocracy mass movement
Academy in 1986, (fig. 10.58) was taken by him.
© Pavel Rahman