It was 3(am) after midnight; I was walking by the road and saw this land ahead of me with dead grass and a building. An unfinished building, like a dead body without skin. And there, from inside I saw a strange light coming out of it. I put my tri pod down and composed my frame slowly and took a 30 second exposure of it. What was I looking at? Was it the cityscapes and urbanization? Or the unusual light coming out that massive structure, I don’t know.
At the beginning my intention was to make a series of photographs which will portray the urban space of Dhaka. Mass people were not my area of interest. I deliberately wanted to exclude this reality of the city so that I can let the viewers to be focused more into the space. I choose a time for me when everyone falls asleep, when the city goes for hibernation, after midnight.
The project was not about any concept that I had and I went to shoot based on that. It was much more about going out quite empty minded and trying to photograph with a felt sense, responding when I am in a space. I photographed the objects, the lands which don’t have any relations with me but at that moment I felt connected. I fell in love with wondering in the nights in an empty city. This was a slow, considered process of photography. For me, this experience was not random but very delicate.
I travelled different parts of the city for capturing different aspects of urban space, to look for social class and development. But later I started noticing unusual things around me. Like a car abandoned under a huge fly over, a crazy women standing still on the top of a bridge, a dog staring still at me while it cross the street, two exploded truck burning in the middle of the road very gently. All these things were attracting me more and more. So I started taking pictures of these.
Now I’m in a position where, I actually don’t know what this project is about or what I actually want to talk about with these photographs. And I don’t even feel the urge to understand it.
Once I read two lines written by a great poet, which says a lot about these pictures. More than all the words I have written here. It goes like,
“I saw myself when I shut my eyes.
Space, Space
Where I am and am not.”
Sarker Protick 