Photography as Journal: An Interview with Ashfika Rahman

In this continuing conversation with Ashfika Rahman, we discuss her ongoing project Files of the Disappeared which engages with the victims of arbitrary state prosecution in Bangladesh. In her artist statement, Rahman writes about one of her subjects: “...twenty-six-year-old Alif (pseudonym) was a labourer in Dubai for the last few years. He went back to visit his family in Bangladesh and was arrested the day after he arrived. He has no idea why, especially since he was not even in the country for so long.” She describes these arrests and torture tactics as mechanisms of fear used by the state. Such practices are prevalent not only in Bangladesh and throughout South Asia, but present a growing humanitarian problem in various parts of the world. Rahman works with psychotherapists who enable these people to process their trauma. Her photographs include excerpts from their journal entries written during this process, in an attempt to create a physical as well as psychological document.

In this conversation, Rahman emphasises the potential for photography to be more than benign documentation, by becoming an activator and catalyst for social change. She recently received the Stitching Screens grant from the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF) for a collaborative project with the Indian artist Amol K. Patil. Rahman talks about the analogous experience of the Covid-19 lockdown for the two artists and the two states. Their project will respond to the dehumanisation faced by the millions of migrant labour—as they were forced to walk homewards—using reported statistics, death rates and the mediated information networks.

^{(Featured Image: From the Series Files of the Disappeared. Photograph with Hand-stitching by Ashfika Rahman. Bangladesh, 2018-Ongoing. Image courtesy of the artist.)}

Interview with Anisha Baid, 6th Jan 2021

In case you missed the first episode of this interview, please click here.

To explore some of Ashfika’s work, please click here.