You are a teenager with a mobile phone. You look up at the sun and try to take a picture. The light is too intense and your phone crashes.
It's a strange story and a rather abrupt way to begin a journey in photography. But this is how Sarker Protick, perhaps the most widely exhibited photographer from Bangladesh in 2014-2015, entered the world of images, with a small phone full of pictures of his friends.
His love for snapshots has continued. One of his newest bodies of work titled Letters is shot entirely with his mobile camera. It is a melancholic tale of arrivals and departures set to the music of John Cage's In a Landscape. Beginning with the words of Fernando Pessoa, "I'd woken up early, and took a long time getting ready to exist", it gives us glimpses of the spaces and solitude Protick experiences during his many journeys away from home.
We met on one such journey in early 2015. Georgetown is an old city with a thriving art scene on the island of Penang in Malaysia. The buildings are remnants from a colonial past and in the early morning light, there is a forgotten fairytale feeling to the shuttered French windows. In August, the city played host to the Obscura Festival of photography, with prints appearing on the peeling walls for a few weeks, and photographers prowling the streets.