Banglar Prem by Anwar Hossain

Photo Thumbs #1 (.pdf file)
Photo Thumbs #2 (.pdf file)

Foreword by Shikoa Nazneen

A meandering road to a diary..

Dark slimy paths, burnt fields or bushes, boat and boatman. Man. Amongst them, two crows are perching on a suddenly high proud branch of bamboo, gazing at the desolate deep dark sky. He takes the picture of the shimmering murmuring water. An illusive portrait in the morning sun, a face looking at the sky-light. He saw the bird which had flown from that sky in the fifties in the suburb on the Titus river's bank. This gentle whispers can be heard from his images. The lonely standing of the soil colored cow, in all our hunger's womb and inside our amazingly beautiful morning; sunk under field water in silence. A garland of shiuli flowers inside a shabby old building, strangely white and swinging in depression. Why is this depression?

In this small country's geography, Anwar Hossain was born in the city slums, but raised up with the mythical history in a valley glittering in the sun. Then he moved far away in the French Lands only to come back often! Sometimes, the story of his coming back is delusional..! In the afternoon when the sunlight gets dimmer, Anwar looks upon the faces of his people, creates images in that pure light where people's faces shine. Thus his pixel heart bleeds his stories... likes summer-wine! In our urban sufferings of seeming-less sorrows; the wonderful moon, 'la lune" keeps itself awake on this middle line of the mute horizon. That moon appears on a hand with the amazing bolt of a primitive lightning; like the flash of the circular motion sound of an adolescent's hand ... Anwar's shutter finger!

It touches us and thus inside the images of Anwar Hossain, that evening of ours, that feminine face, the melancholy garland of the Shiuli flowers, the tomb of a beloved sister; become the pages of the diary of this green Bengal with her urban areas. Anwar feels the throbs of his country; the stretching of sunbeams in her geography and the expressions of rivers or Bengal blue seashores. Nothing cultivated like the 'Agunmukho' firefly river of memory, or like the fisherman's boat in the vast expanses of the sea "Durgasagor' from his childhood. Still, he incessantly endeavors watching the watermarks in the scratched faces of Bengal. Anwar keeps watching. And thus he includes all of our visualizations as well.

His photographs exist alongside with the intimate affections of the Bengal of ours. The trembling straight hesitations, hard-soft urban areas, or the history of humanity and nature are created by his shutter-fingers continuously... constantly!

Shikoa Nazneen
Dhaka, January 2010