Bangladeshi photographer
Atish Saha, after accepting the OPC Madeline Dane Ross Award this year,
embarked on a months-long journey that he described as “a crazy Disneyland
ride” across America.
Saha
shared the award with Jason Motlagh for their coverage of the Rana Plaza
garment factory collapse in April 2013 that killed more than 1000 people. With
help from the OPC, Saha was able to attend the OPC Annual Dinner and accept the
award in person. He decided to extend his stay for several months to explore,
take photos and scare up some work.
His
travels took him to the heart of protests in Baltimore following Freddy Grey’s
death in police custody, across the country by Greyhound from New York to California,
and into fringe communities that shook his conceptions of America.
He said
the 2,800-mile bus trip was “the most disgusting thing I have ever done,” with
meal stops where the food was expensive and inedible. Along the way he was
surprised to meet many young and poor military veterans, some asking for
cigarettes and money. People who serve in the military in Bangladesh, he said, earn
a decent wage.
After
arriving in California, Saha visited a place called Slab City in the Sonora
desert about 200 miles from San Diego. He embedded himself for 18 days in the
campsite shanty town, which is built on an abandoned military barracks that
offers no running water or other amenities.
“My body
was fried by the heat,” he said, which regularly hit 120 degrees Farenheit.
Builder Bill, a figure mentioned in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and a 14-year
resident of Slab City, was his host. Saha photographed the community and plans
to return to finish a series he tentatively calls “The Other America.”
Saha is
drawn to outsider communities as a subject for his lens.
“People
living off the grid, out of established society with different culture and
views. Because that’s what we have been missing in our country for a long time.
We really don’t have room for different views at all.”
Saha has
returned to New York, where he is photographing the lives of a lesbian couple
in with plans for an exhibition in Dhaka, where homosexuals face fierce
discrimination.
Over the
last few years, Bangladesh has seen a wave of religious violence that has
claimed hundreds of lives. Tensions have flared over a war crimes tribunal
prosecuting genocide and other crimes that date back to the 1971 war of
independence.
Saha said
Muslims in Bangladesh have slowly become more conservative as money and
influence pours in from the Middle East and politicians take advantage. The
Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 19 journalists have been killed
in Bangladesh since 1992, four of them since January this year: Niloy Neel,
Ananta Bijoy Das, Washiqur Rahman Babu and Avijit Roy.
Saha’s
close friend, political activist Shammi Haque, has been followed and threatened
for speaking out against Islamic fundamentalists.
In
Jessore Malopara, where Islamists burned a whole town in an attack against
Hindus, Saha photographed the aftermath where people lost their homes and many were
forced to jump into a nearby river to escape fires.
“Right
now is the time we will decide what kind of country we want to be,” he said,
adding that the point of no return could come as soon as five years from now.
Earlier
this year, he narrowly missed an attack when the bus he was riding in was
firebombed just a few minutes after he had gotten out.
“People
were jumping in front of my eyes and getting burned,” he said. No one was
killed, but several of the riders were severely burned. Saha said the chilling
thing about the attack is that life on the street resumed soon after the bus
was engulfed in flames. “We got so used to it. And nobody even talks about it,
like it’s completely normal.”
He said
the only way he can cope with the trauma of witnessing such suffering is to
keep taking photos.
“It’s
like if music makes you high, you have to listen to it all the time. And if you
don’t listen to music, you feel empty, right?” he said. “When I don’t take
photos I feel I don’t have anything to say. I feel bored, dumb and numb.”
Saha’s
photos have been published in Time
magazine, The Guardian, Vice, the Virginia Quarterly Review, as well as many newspapers in Bangladesh.
Before he
departed for California this spring, Atish sat down for a video interview at
the OPC office to talk about his work in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza
collapse. The interview is available to watch on the video section of this site.
Watch Saha’s video interview with OPC >>
Read the award-winning story about Rana Plaza in the Virginia Quarterly Review >>