Faculty

Saiful Huq Omi

Saiful Huq Omi, Bangladesh, first studied telecoms engineering, before taking up photography in 2005. His photos have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time and Asian Photography, among others. His work has been exhibited in galleries from Zimbabwe and Russia to Japan and his home country. Saiful has received a number of awards, including the All Roads National Geographic Award, and an emerging photographers grant from the Open Society Institute. His Rohingya project gained him a grant from the Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund. Saiful is represented by Polaris Images and published his first photo book, Heroes Never Die - Tales of Political Violence in Bangladesh, in 2006.

Monirul Alam

Monirul Alam was born at Old Dhaka in 1975. He took up photography in 1994. After completing his Bachelor in Accounting from the National University, he went on to graduate from Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography. Monirul currently works as a deputy chief photojournalist in The Daily Prothom Alo newspaper.

Syed Latif Hossain

Syed Latif Hossain, born in 1970, is a self-taught photographer and graphic designer. Taking photography from early childhood, he started as a professional freelance photographer in 1997. With an ingrained disinclination towards competition, he remained less known to the mainstream photographic arena. However, his works have been exhibited in several group exhibitions both in Bangladesh and abroad mainly as a member of the now defunct Aalok group of photographers.

Ahmed Rasel

Ahmed Rasel, born in 1988, is a documentary Photographer based in Bangladesh. He completed his MA in Bengali Literature from Dhaka University in 2013. In 2014 he completed the Mentorship Program under SaifulHuq Omi and also completed the One Year Diploma Program on Professional Photography at Counter Foto. His photographs were published in Trouw, Private Magazine, F-stop magazine, The Daily Independent, and The Daily OrthonityProtidin among others. His work has been presented at Just Another Photo Festival Delhi and exhibited in several galleries in Bangladesh and has achieved several awards.

Ekramul Kabir Sohan

Ekramul Kabir Shohan was born (in 1983) and grew up in Old Dhaka. After his university education, he started a filmmaking career as a Production Manager in 2006 understanding the filmmaking process up close. Ekramul cinematographed a documentary film on Rohingya refugees for the Aljazeera television network and his work also appeared on BBC and Channel 4 television, in London. Now he has been working as a cinematographer in two feature-length documentary projects directed by documentary filmmaker Manzare Hasin and photographer Saiful Huq Omi. Another two independent fiction films are in the post-production stage. Ekramul has been developing an idea for a documentary film revolving around the theme of life in the borderland.

Faiham Ebna Sharif

Currently working as a freelance photojournalist. I did my honours and Masters in International Relations at the University of Dhaka before studying Photography. I finished my ‘One Year Diploma in Photography’ at Counter Foto. Before taking photography classes, I worked as a reporter and broadcaster. I had the opportunity to work in featured films and international productions as well.

Kazi Raisat Alve

Kazi Riasat Alve was born on June 22, 1990. At first, he was a student at a business school but his serious passion for photography led him to become a photographer. He is interested in photographing social and humanitarian issues mainly. He completed the mentorship of Saiful Huq Omi at Counter Foto and completed a year diploma program at the same institute. He also participated in workshops conducted by Philip Blenkinsop, Pieter Ten Hoopen, Giulio Di Struco, and Catherine Karnow.

Muhammad Aminuzzaman

I completed my Master of Commerce in 1995 from the University of Dhaka before pursuing my PhD in “A Study of Photography in Bangladesh: 1972-1990” at Vrije Universiteit Brussels in Belgium. I’ve completed a three-year course on photography from Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography. I received Training of trainers for tutors by World Press Photo held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I am a full-time teacher at Green University of Bangladesh. I worked as a teacher at BRAC University, the Independent University of Bangladesh and Pathshala South Asian Media Institute. My photography has been exhibited in Bangladesh, Germany, the Netherlands and Malaysia. My images were published in Time Journal of Photography, The Saudi Aramco World and the book, Our World of Water by Oxfam GB. I also contributed to five documentaries filmed in Bangladesh and India which were broadcast on BBC’s ‘Earth Report’.

Shantanu Majumder

Shantanu Majumder was born in 1984. He is a freelance photographer based in Bangladesh. He studied graphic design at Dhaka University before picking up photography as his own voice. He worked under the mentorship of Saiful Huq Omi at Counter Foto. Later he obtained a professional diploma degree in photography from the same institute. When he was a student at Counter Foto, he participated in masterclass workshops of Pieter Ten Hoopen, Asim Rafiqui and Giulio Di Sturco. Now he is working on his own independent photographic projects.

Munir Uz Zaman

Munir Uz Zaman started his carries with a local news agency in 2005. In 2008 he started to work with Agence France-Presse (AFP). By this time, he covered most of the important news breaks in Bangladesh and his works were widely published all over the world, such as the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Time Magazine, Guardian etc. As well as he has also worked for the Los Angeles Times as their South Asian Region correspondent. In 2012 he was embedded with the US Army in Afghanistan. He was honoured with a few international awards for his outstanding work on Rohingya in 2012 and Garments building collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013.

Moiyen Zalal Chowdhury

Moiyen Zalal Chowdhury (Sharat), popularly known as Sharat Chowdhury was born in 1983, in Bangladesh. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Anthropology at Hiroshima University, Japan. Trained in Anthropology and Mass Communication consecutively at Jahangirnagar University and Dhaka University he worked in diverse fields like research, social media, teaching, and photojournalism. He has pioneered research on Social Media in Bangladesh. His research interest expands to identity politics, visual representation, Islam, and popular culture. His current research is focused on civil resistance. With one decade in Blogging and creative writing, his interest expands to publishing, activism, and community mobilization both in the underpinning of scholarly and political curiosity. Teaching is one of his passions, and he will be teaching at Jogukan University in Hiroshima soon. He was the vice president of the Hiroshima University International Student Association and coordinator of the Mobukagakusho scholarship of IDEC. Currently, He is an Assistant Professor (Anthropology) at BRAC University.

Pieter Ten Hoopen

Pieter Ten Hoopen is an experienced and internationally acclaimed photographer based in Stockholm, Sweden. Transitioning between editorial work, personal projects and commercial assignments.

Asim Rafiqul

Asim Rafiqui is an independent photographer based in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been working professionally since 2003 and has been focusing on issues related to the aftermath of conflict.

Maggie Steber

I have worked as a documentary photographer in over 62 countries. My longtime work in Haiti received the prestigious Alicia Patterson Foundation and Ernst Haas grants, along with numerous honours and awards.

Patrick Brown

Born in Sheffield, England, Patrick Brown spent a nomadic childhood living in the Middle East, Canada and Africa before his family finally settled in Perth, Western Australia. He found himself increasingly drawn to documentary photography and was greatly influenced by images of war and urban strife during the 1980s and 90s.

Giulio di Sturco

Giulio di Sturco is a 32-year-old Italian photographer currently based in Bangkok, Thailand. He studied photography at the European Institute of Design and Visual Arts in Rome, and his work has appeared in many international publications such as L’espresso magazine, Vanity Fair, Io Donna, The Daily Telegraph magazine, Time magazine, Marie-Claire, geo magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Newsweek.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind

Anastasia Taylor-Lind is an English/Swedish documentary photographer who is a member of the VII photo agency.

Shikder Abir Mahmud Jahan

Shikder Abir Mahmud Jahan, renowned by his news byline Sam Jahan, is a professional multi-platform journalist currently based in Dhaka. Sam studied journalism in the United Kingdom and returned home to explore his journalistic career. He initially started his career at The Daily Star desk. Later he single-handedly pioneered the daily’s multimedia front in 2014 by popularising the Mobile Journalism (MoJo) concept among colleagues. Sam then joined Agence France-Presse (AFP) as its Bangladesh text-video correspondent and proudly covered the Rohingya exodus, ongoing climate crises and political turmoils in the country. He won four respected international awards for his groundbreaking work. Sam briefly worked for CNN, TRT World, and ABC and consulted for UNICEF. He founded BJIM, an organisation of Bangladeshi journalists working in international media at home and abroad.

Mohammad Azam

Professor at Department of Bangla, Dhaka University

Muhammad Imam Hasan

Muhammad Imam Hasan was born and raised in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Imam is a child specialist working at Shishu Hospital in Dhaka and a passionate street photographer. He has won several national and international awards, including the 2017 StreetFoto Sanfrancisco for the single image category. He has also conducted several workshops on street photography and has been a judge in numerous national and international photography competitions, including StreetFoto San Francisco and the London Street Photography Festival. “Humans” features some of the world’s leading street photographers, each with their own take on reality. The collection combines virtual and physical art in perfect harmony. Indeed, the NFT will be paired with a Hahnemühle Fine Pigment Art Print of dimensions 70×50 cm signed by the author, unique in the world. Eyeshot will send the fine art print directly to the first owner of the digital token.

Sheikh Suraiya Rehnuma

Altaf Qadri

Jim Goldberg

Jim Goldberg is committed to examining and extending traditional documentary photography. For his first book, Rich and Poor (1985), the San Francisco–based photographer made documentary-style pictures of people in their homes, which ranged from elegant to modest to rudimentary. He further engaged his subjects in the process by asking them to write a commentary underneath their portrait. These invariably reveal concerns about class, happiness, and power. His next major project, Raised by Wolves (1995), focused on street kids in San Francisco and Los Angeles, many of whom had been abused, and integrated their drawings, letters, memories, and family pictures into the work. In 2004, after joining the cooperative photography agency Magnum, Goldberg embarked on his extended New Europeans project, exploring the experience of immigrants who left war-torn or economically distressed homelands to make new lives in Europe. With his subjects involvement and frequently using their words, he created the resulting series, Open See (2009).

Susan Meiselas

Susan Meiselas is an American documentary photographer. She has been associated with Magnum Photos since 1976 and has been a full member since 1980. Currently, she is the President of the Magnum Foundation. She is best known for her 1970s photographs of war-torn Nicaragua and American carnival strippers.

Arko Datto

Before stepping into the world of contemporary photography, Arko Datto was on course to receive a doctorate in theoretical sciences.

M N I Chowdhury

Sohan Rahat

Aneek Mustafa Anwar

Md. Main Uddin

Mustafa Zaman

Abu Naser

Reyad Abedin

Enamur Reza

Mashruk Ahmed

Reza Shahriar Rahman

I was born in 1989, in a middle-class family in Bangladesh. I studied computer science before leaving my career to study photography at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute from 2010 to 2013. I learnt photography from masters like Morten Krogvold, Philip Blenkinsop, Max Pam and Asim Rafiqui. I also worked under the mentorship of Saiful Huq Omi for a year.

Masood Imran Mannu

Masood Imran Mannu, PhD, Professor, Department of Archaeology, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He earned PhD from Hiroshima University, Japan, on safeguarding-Govermentality of the Cultural Heritage of Bangladesh. At National and International levels, there have been 22 journals, 6 book chapters, and 6 books published. He has been performing as an invited paper presenter, keynote speaker and senior chair in several international seminars and symposiums. Based on his academic achievement, Dr Surat Ali Khan and Sharfuddin Gold Medal from Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh and Excellent Student Scholarship Award from Hiroshima University, Japan. His research interest on critical theories to understand the past, specially, identity, and representational politics of the past, spatial pattern of cultural heritage sites, predictive 3D modelling of monuments and generating VR of cultural heritage sites.

Dr. Syed Nizar (Syed Moynul Alam Nizar)

My fascination with traditional and critical ideas in philosophy and logic has, and continues to, define my major life choices. I held a visiting scholar position at the University of Canterbury for six months. I received the Khyentse Foundations Buddhist Studies Scholarship. During my Ph.D. studies, I served as the New Zealand representative at the Australasian Association of Philosophy (Postgraduate Committee) from 2018 to 2020. In 2021, I completed my doctoral dissertation on an ancient form of Eastern reasoning called catuskoti at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. As part of the MSc in Mathematical Logic and Theory of Computation that I attained from the University of Manchester in 2009, I completed a thesis: Indian Logic: A Contemporary Perspective. This involved a modern formalization for Navya-Nyāya, based on Gangeśopādhyāyas (the most prominent Naiyāyika logician) theory of inference. As with any logical calculus, Navya-Nyāya consists of formal syntax and semantics. In the thesis, I defined a concept of semantic consequence based on Gangeśas theory of pervasion, and hence, of syntactical consequence. In June 2007, I completed a BA with an Honours degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. My dissertation, The Predicament of Deductive Logic, investigated the problem of justifying deductive logical systems. Recently I have published a book titled Colonization of Indian Art and S. M. Sultan, exploring the impact colonisation had on post sixteenth-century Indian art and philosophical discussions around the effects.

Dr. Samina Luthfa

I am an activist researcher interested in studying the environmental justice movement, political ecology, gender, and media. I use qualitative and mixed-method research. My general geographical focus is on South Asia. I am currently working on labour rights in the apparel industry, feminist analysis of food safety-related Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP), theatre actors, and Mandi peasants; popular culture and youth preference in music, extractivism in South Asia; and creative musings in political protests.

Sayeed Ferdous

I am a researcher on Partition studies and my ethnographic and archival work in East Bengal as on Bengal Borderland to date provides a much-needed perspective beyond the Indocentricemphasis on Partition experiences. This would add to the significant knowledge-building process of South Asian Studies and Postcolonial Historiography. I have spent two semesters in the East-West Center (EWC), Hawaii as a fellow of the Asia Pacific Leadership Program (sponsored by the US State Department). I have been part of various invited and funded workshops on memory and methodology, ethnography and history. As a teacher, I have taught anthropology/history in various capacities in Hawaii Pacific University, Lancaster University, UK, Eastern University, Dhaka; and Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka. I received the Charles Wallace fellowship as well as various other funds and awards. My interdisciplinary expertise has been honed by working closely on earlier aspects of my research project with Prof Willem van Schendel (Anthropology, Amsterdam) and Prof. Derek Sayer (History, Lancaster University). After my PhD I joined back in the Department of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. I have served as the editor of Nrivijnana Patrika Vol 22 and 23; the Journal of Anthropology, published by the Department of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University. I have jointly conducted research titled Longing and Belonging: 1947 Partition Narratives in partnership with Goethe Institute, Bangladesh, as part of the project Inherited Memories (Part II).

Suborna Morsheada

Suborna Morsheadas artistic endeavours span a wide range of media, including etching, lithography, wood engraving, and anything within the gamut of applied and fine art. A graduate of the Department of Printmaking at Dhaka Universitys Faculty of Fine Arts, her primary muse is the profound interplay between love and life. Her artworks are deeply inspired by her emotional experiences and journey as an artist, spanning the spectrum from joy and serenity to moments of sadness and despair. Her works have been showcased in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad including 10th Ulsan International Woodcut Print Biennial 2022, South Korea; Documenta Fifteen 2022, Germany; 17th Asian Art Biennial 2016, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka; Chobi Mela 2018 organized by Drik and Pathshala; Young Artist Art Exhibition (2016, 18, 22) Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka. She has also attended many art residencies and workshops across the world. Suborna won the Kibria Young Printmaker Best Award in 2016 and also won the Berger Best Young Painter Award in 2018.