The shutting-down of two photographic exhibitions in Dhaka's Drik Gallery in just the last few months proves that Bangladesh's censors, unlike lightning, can strike at the same place more than once – especially where Drik's photographic practices are concerned. But then, Drik seems to have become a lightning rod inviting censure, and this will not be the last time either. Not if I know Shahidul Alam and his commitment to pushing photography in what he calls "the majority world". If actually being knifed has not stopped him, nothing will.
The British High Commission in Dhaka had once tried to shut down a Drik exhibition by Roshini Kampadoo because it "hurt the image of Britain". And in November last year it was the turn of the Chinese embassy in Dhaka that wanted an exhibition on Tibet, also in Drik, to be closed. When a personal visit by the Chinese Cultural Counsellor and his cultural attaché bearing gifts (calendar, a silk tie and tea) didn't work, they invoked worsening diplomatic relations and brought to bear the weight of the Bangladeshi government, Special Branch police and even parliamentarians. But Alam didn't buckle, instead inaugurating the exhibition in the street after the gallery was locked up by the police. He shut it down the next day, however, as a protest against the interference.
Alam's new exhibition and installation, "Crossfire", should have been safer from threats of closure. It was not photojournalistic documentary or even an Americanised 'documentary style'. It showed no dead or disappeared people. Much more conceptual, it allegorically invoked the disappeared through subtler and quieter means. But because it dealt with 'crossfire' deaths by specially raised Rapid Action Battalions (in India, one would call these 'encounter deaths'), it drew fire – and closure, and protests against the closure.
Global strong arm
There is something about photography that invites censorship. The power of the photographic image simply has to be controlled, it seems – one way or another. If ideas of aesthetics, beauty and spiritual values don't work, governments pass and use anti-terror laws. And internationally applicable anti-terror laws, with the attendant globalised cultural control, are now beginning to have a universal presence, reach and influence.