In his first solo in
India, Dhaka-based Shumon Ahmed highlights the haunting world of ship-breaking
yards.
STEEPED in melancholy,
Shumon Ahmed’s photographic prints of the ship-breaking industry in the
Chittagong district’s Baro Aulia have an undeniable impact. The broken and
rusted ruins of once-imposing freighters and tankers have a haunting quality
which is beautifully captured in the deliberate imperfections of Ahmed’s works.
“Mistakes are beautiful. The imperfections in the work have helped me
communicate the sense of loss that I felt each time I visited this place,” says
the Dhaka-based artist, as he oversees the setting up of his first solo
exhibition, “When Dead Ships Travel”, in India. The show at Colaba’s Project 88
will be on till November 7.
When Ahmed first visited
Baro Aulia, he hadn’t expected to be so moved. “In 2009, I was accompanying a
Swedish photographer, who wanted to photograph the place. I had only taken
along two cameras,” he recalls, “I ended up borrowing my friend’s Hasselblad to
take pictures of what I saw, because I felt like my own cameras were unable to
capture what I was feeling.” He returned to the scene later, and went on to
take pictures that would form the series Metal Graves.
To Ahmed, a photography
graduate from Dhaka’s South Asian Media Academy, the idea of using analog
photography grew organically, as his engagement with the subject deepened.When
he revisited Baro Aulia this year, to continue exploring the idea that had
begun with Metal Graves, he was armed with six cameras, including analog
cameras such as a panoramic pinhole, paper pinhole (made by Ahmed himself), two
different Polaroid cameras, a Diana with three different lenses and a
Rolliflex. Similarly, he also used a variety of film such as Kodak 100 VS,
Kodak 400 VC colour film, and Agfa 100 to 400 ISO. He explains that the idea
was to have an “adventure”, because using plastic-bodied cameras and old film
increased the possibility of happy accidents like light leaks, blurring and
sepia tones. “We can use digital photography and tools like Photoshop to make
our photographs more ‘perfect’, but there’s no drama or surprise there. For me,
the excitement in photography comes from not being able to predict what the
final images will look like,” he says.
These technical choices
that Ahmed made thus end up accurately reflecting the decay and desolation of
the ship-breaking yard. In When Dead Ships Travel 6, for instance, he used the
Diana camera with a 120 Agfa black-and-white film to shoot the shoreline. The
result is a blurred, ghostly effect that conveys the photographer’s view of the
ship-breaking yard, as suggested by the title. Similarly, in When Dead Ships
Travel 5, Ahmed uses a panoramic pinhole camera to present a wide view of the
desolation of Baro Aulia. The vignetting around the edges and the shaky,
blurred outlines evoke the haziness of memories and nightmares.
This may not be the end
of his photographic exploration of the shoreline along the Chittagong district.
“I discovered a market near the ship-breaking yard that sells objects rescued
from the ships. I found it fascinating how these objects are getting a second
life, even as the ships wait to be broken down,” Ahmed says. Another place he
wants to re-visit is the St Martin’s island, the only coral island in
Bangladesh, that is a part of the Chittagong district. . “The island suggests
what the shores must have been like before the ship-breaking industry grew
there. I want to explore the vast difference between the two places.”
Source:
Indian express. 20 October 2015
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