Rasel Chowdhury 2011 Winner

Desperate Urbanisation

When we are celebrating 400 years of Dhaka City, River Buriganga is fighting to survive. Today, it is nearly dead, can’t run on its natural way. It seems that people of Dhaka are killing the river for their insensitivity.

With the population of 16 million people, Today, Dhaka is functioning as a megacity. Working places and various factories are booming constantly. Buriganga River is the one of the most popular way to communicate with another part of the country. Millions of people use the river everyday for bearing their various goods.

Tannery chemical, Mans wastage of whole Dhaka City and Industrial Wastage chemicals directly go down in Buriganga River. Nearly 700 brickfields on the riverside, dockyards and Barn oil from the boats and steamers are the causes of pollution.

Water-born or water-bred diseases are causing health problems along the banks of the Buriganga River. These diseases include vector borne diseases such as malaria, filariasis and dengu hemoragic fever, as well as water-related diseases such as shigella food poisoning, viral hepatitis and typhoid. Such health impacts are particularly concentrated in the slum areas on the banks of the Buriganga River and among low-income families where access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation facilities is most limited.

This 41 km long river once blessed us with hope and dream to build a new city.  But today, the city itself is a cause for the death of Buriganga. We, the Citizens of Dhaka, are going to destroy our own river!

As a photographer, I see my role in my engagement with own city. I have an intrinsic relationship with this city and river as I spent most of my life in and around them. As a documentary photographer, my approach will project the river and its rapidly changing landscape in every possible angle. My plan is to explore several corners of the river to have a big picture on people’s destructive involvement. At the same time, divine water of the river, stands alone with its new wave of hope. I want to capture all the aspects for a greater concern and I believe this grant will help me to do so.