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Photography as a Tool for Social ChangeDhaka Seige Day on 10 th November 1987 was an important day for me. It was as an activist with a camera that I took to the streets. We would bring down a General who had usurped our freedoms. The newspapers had closed in protest against censorship. The military was in the streets enforcing curfew, but that didn't stop us. Noor Hossain, a young worker, had painted on his chest, 'Let Democracy Be Freed'. He was killed by police bullets that day. But we had carried on working, fellow activists with their protests, I with my camera, and the General was eventually forced to step down. Our planned underground exhibition no longer made sense. Sticking prints on cardboard, we put up our show in the gallery of the art college. News spread by word of mouth. In the three and a half days we showed the work, over 400,000 people came to see the show. The queue was over a mile long. We had near riots at the entrance. When I photographed Prince and his friends years later for Positive Lives, they craved a different freedom. Gay men had never expressed their sexuality except in closed circles. The pictures would be their way of coming out into the open. We didn't know how safe it would be and used pseudonyms in the beginning. They came to see the show, mingled with the crowd. Posed with the photographs. The next day they asked me to put their real names back on. The ground had been tested, and a statement had been made. The photographs had created a space they had never had before. Mizan worked in my mother's house. He cleaned the TV room and served tea to the guests, but sat outside the room to watch his favourite programme. We printed the photograph of Mizan watching "Alif Laila" through the doorway in a calendar. My mother received one copy of the calendar, another went to Mizan. From that day on, he sat inside the room. It was a small victory but one that mattered to us both. People with the power of words continue to be the gatekeepers of our society. But where knowledge of the written word continues to divide the 'haves' from the 'have nots', images will continue to grow as a tool for the oppressed. It is through the power of photographs that we will have our say. Shahidul Alam
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