Sonar Bangla by Anwar Hossain

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Foreword by Moinuddin Khaled

Wonders are still spreading all around us as we place our steps anywhere in Bangladesh; let that be in any town or village. Life here flows in all directions and nature plays it’s part, humbly. All human faces around us, genuinely reflect of what our archaeological history was and also of our present. Sensing all these, and being part with these, one can very easily become a poet. Placing his eagle eyes on all those going around him or to freeze a smile of a teen age girl, catch life about. The camera of Anwar Hossain always stood ready to capture the inner threads of all those beauties, for today and for the history. At his 60s, Anwar is still actively behind his cameras to get the best essence and blend of man and nature.

This camera artist has walled along roads of Bangladesh for many many years. Enriched himself with memories of his times, liberation war in 1971 and the complexities of human lives. His profound confidence goes deep into him, into human history, life and love. Blending man and man as well as man and nature in his work is simply marvellous. Anwar Hossain picks up a few of the rhymes of human lives full of joy, a child lying on an old man’s lap, lines of country boats and almost dried rivers, sketches of small patches of trees with a sign of human habitat. Life of common people, country mud pathways, small patches of forest and so many others got renewed births in his cameras. Lives of people are the foremost lovable topic of his.

Making the best use of almost all possibilities with black and white photography, his utmost efforts went to keep nature the most natural. Somewhere in his images, darkness is complete darkness and elsewhere darkness is a blend of light and shadows. Anwar Hossain holds forms of those and reflects them into his photography. Rabindranath Thakur said : “This world is a great journey of size and shape”. Anwar Hossain is not only a still photographer but also a cinematographer who at his prime life studied architecture seriously. To make the best use of light accommodating forms and space, Anwar Hossain made all his photography real.

In light and darkness, the magic strength that normally is shade and forms is his passion. Photography is a consistent dialogue between light and darkness, and that whispers strongly about the very composition of life itself.