Munem Wasif. File Photo

DHAKA, April 27, 2025 (BSS) - The greatest part of living as an artist is being able to be surprised to understand that the essence of life is hidden in the small and insignificant details of life.

These words were spoken by Munem Wasif, a photographer working on visual arts at the Bengal Art Gallery in Dhaka.

Munem Wasif's solo visual arts exhibition titled 'Gradually' began on April 18. The exhibition, which is open to visitors, will run from 4 pm to 8 pm every day till May 31.

Regarding her activities and perception of life, Munem Wasif said, "I can't really say why there are so many places in Dhaka and Old Dhaka. I lived in Old Dhaka for seven/eight years. My passion for Old Dhaka has been with me since childhood. I grew up reading the writings of Akhtaruzzaman Elias and Zahir. There is also a literary story behind it".

He said, "the exhibition features various types of pictures about Old Dhaka. Old Dhaka is a place where you have to be surprised even if you go every day. The life of people's lives actually touches me when you go to Old Dhaka after so many years. I was inspired by this Old Dhaka and worked on Old Dhaka".

When asked why he felt comfortable working with visual arts, he said, "I worked in this medium, I liked it and I chose my life through it. As a result, it is not something I chose separately, but it became possible through trying various means".

His book 'Gradually' has been published around the exhibition.

"Here are four authors' writings about my works. The other book is from Paris, France, in 2012, where I took black and white pictures that I took there for twelve years," he said.

It was published by Paris International Publishers to tell people about Old Dhaka in the book for the world to read. The books are written in English. Munem intends to translate it into Bengali for readers of all ages.

In 2023, Wasif received the Robert Gardner Fellowship to work on the history of indigo cultivation in Bengal. Munem said about indigo cultivation, "I have been working on indigo cultivation for a long time. Last year, I received a grant from Harvard University in the United States to work on the history of indigo cultivation. I am researching that topic. There will be exhibitions on those topics in the future".

He received this honorary fellowship from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University in the United States. In this fellowship, he will be given a scholarship of about 5.4 million Bangladeshi taka. Munem Wasif is the first Bangladeshi photographer to achieve this honor.

Munem Wasif said that he will use this fellowship for his artwork titled 'Indigo'. According to him, it is a multi-dimensional narrative of the retrospective history of indigo cultivation in Bengal.

His work often explores ideas of transience and insecurity through a combination of photography, moving images, archival documents and collected materials. His approach is longitudinal and iterative, presenting a multi-layered, sensitive and sometimes contradictory perception.

The images presented by Munem Wasif tell the story of life in old Dhaka. He said in his film narrative, ‘gradually’, he arranged his images in three phases through a mixture of photography, film and sculpture – the internal, the superficial and the conscious.

At the same time, the work gradually develops towards three types of time, which have no specific trajectory or destination. The past, the present and an imagined future. Multiple layers of time are captured in this process. Why do times breathe in one place in the middle? And gradually they cross each other’s boundaries – ‘gradually’.

His ‘substantial’, modest, and thoughtful images speak of different times. Wasif’s work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Victoria and Albert Museum, Musée Elysée, Dhaka Art Summit, Chobi Mela, and the Sharjah, Singapore, Taipei, Guangzhou, Diriyah, Lyon Biennales.

On the other hand, Munim Wasif’s publications, which possess multifaceted qualities, include Belonging Clementine (De la Ferroniere, 2013) and Salt Water Tears (Images Pouriels, 2011) and a collection of Bengali language essays on photography, Kamra, co-edited with Tanjim Wahab, of which two editions have already been published.

He was a fellow at the Wissenschaftsschule zu Berlin, Germany, in 2020-2021. At the same time, Munem has been working as a teacher at the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute and as a co-curator of Chobi Mela since 2015.

It is worth noting that Munem Wasif studied sociology at Dhaka University and later studied photography at Pathshala.