Archiving Visual Memory

The unwritten history of photography is deeply intertwined with the visual memory of the people of this land. Drik Picture Library undertook the task of conserving and documenting the history of photography through an oral history project in 2017. Up until now, preliminary information has been collected about photographic practices in 6 districts, namely, Khulna, Bogura, Manikganj, Joshore, Rangpur and Rajshahi. We started off by wanting to know the story of the first camera or the first photo studio of the district. Our questions hinged on: how did studio photography grow, did it revolve around a particular photographer? How have political events such as Partition, the Liberation War impacted on and influenced photographic practices? How have the state and society’s need for photographic images changed over time, how have they changed with technological changes in the camera? Are there class, gender and ethnic differences in the pursuit of photography as a hobby, and photography as a necessity? More broadly speaking, we attempted to discover the life histories of photographers, to know about their economic successes and struggles, and to unearth the stories behind the photographs taken by them. This collection has been built from the little that we have learnt about Khulna photography. The collections which we tapped into largely contained passport photographs that had been taken for official purposes. But, as is generally assumed, not all faces were equally undemonstrative and reserved. We came across passport photographs where negatives had been painted slightly red to make the faces appear fair. Blemishless. We came across photographs of couples about to be married, or of newly-married couples, standing in front of pretty landscapes denoting ‘bidesh’ or faraway lands. The crematorium photograph, 86 years-old, is the oldest we came across. That it had been taken outside a studio indicates what we term ‘documentary’ photography was practised then as well, alongside studio photography. We have also come across pictures in which photographers had variously experimented with light.