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Syeda Farhana: An eye for detail

KAVITA CHARANJI
"There is an overflow of subjects in Bangladesh," says Syeda Farhana, an indefatigable freelance photographer. Inspiration comes from many sources: migrant women, vignettes from life in Dhaka, rickshaws and orphan girls, among others. Quite often these works are interspersed with text--which is where she departs from her counterparts in the country. As she says, "My text, along with my images, offer a new dimension to the viewer. I sometimes combine photo text and sound together."
And there's a story behind each of her subjects. Take the series Rickshaw and Others (begun in 2000). These photographs are basically the reflections of a rickshaw, people, and cloudy skies on rainwater. This work is akin to a painting because of its colour and abstraction. It also captures the gloominess of the day effectively.
Since 2001, she has been working on her pet subject-migration. The work is a story on women migrants from Bangladesh to Malaysia. Farhana followed these women to get a first hand experience of their re-adjustment to life back home. "I have been writing stories about these women with photographs. The title of the story is Hasna wants to fly," asserts Farhana.
The other photographs are about orphan girls in Khulna and life in Dhaka (called Dhaka--A city of many layers). Then there are the photo stories Dilliwale kaun, Baharwale kaun? and Poth i desh (The street is my country), displayed on the web. In Dhaka, she seeks to show the different strata of the city. In one such work, she combines a variety of subjects--a mother and child, the Taj Mahal together with Mumtaz Mahal, a wheel and graffiti espousing the purdah. "Basically I have superimposed one image on another," explains Farhana.
Dilliwale kaun, Baharwale kaun and Poth I Desh, are based on photographs and conversations with the Bangladeshi emigrants and give a bird's eye view of their lives in Delhi.
"I always wanted to do something creative," Farhana recalls. Which is why she quickly took up an assignment with filmmaker Shameem Akhter. The film was Itihash Konya with Farhana as a production assistant. Reminiscing on those times, Farhana says, "While I was working on this film, I found that most interesting element was the visual and, therefore, I took to the camera."
Later she was introduced by Shameem Akhter to a German filmmaker Ulrike Schaz. Farhana joined forces with Ulrike as a translator in a docu-film titled Kishani Shabha. The film took her to Hamburg, Germany in 2000.
Meanwhile Farhana built up her
career as a photographer. Prior to winging her way to Germany, she took a basic still camera course in 1999 at the South Asian Institute of Photography, Patshala in Dhaka. In 2000, she took a diploma course in photo journalism.
Farhana has held numerous exhibitions of her works--in Delhi and Dhaka. The challenge is to gain acceptance for her experiments with different forms.
What's the next stop for Farhana? She is keen to make a film, but she finds the medium very expensive. Meanwhile, she is all set to leave for Delhi as a new media artistadding sound and photo writing for the work on the Khulna orphanage. Another plan is to exhibit Dilliwale this October in Berlin and Stuttgart.
Here's hoping that Farhana's work will create ripples in art and photography circles.