Shadman Shahid was the recipient of the 2018 Emerging Photographer Fund and was granted $10,000 for this essay. Burn Magazine revolves around the EPF and it is our most important curatorial contribution to the oftentimes chaotic landscape of photography today. Most importantly, our mission is to give recognition to the finest emerging authors out there and to provide some funding to keep going and to continue making a mark.
Shadman Shahid
No Quarter
[ EPF 2018 WINNER – $10,000]
87% of the women in Bangladesh are victims of domestic violence in Bangladesh. The numbers tell us that the Bangladeshi society, including the victims, take it as a normal part of life. In many cases, the couple stays in such abusive relationships for years. The victims remain silent, enduring throughout the time and the abuser stays unpunished and unchanged.
No quarter is a story of such a couple, Alo and Sagor, who have been in an abusive relationship for more than 20 years now. It is a Docu-fiction created based on the many interviews that I have taken of Alo. During the interviews, she shared the memories that have left the deepest marks, like sharing snapshots from a family album except these snapshots are not as biased to happy memories as most family albums are.
During her interview she told me, while growing up, she was a bright child and how she was her father’s favorite among all her siblings. She liked the Thundercats and she liked to make dolls. She told me that it was normal for a girl to get married when they were nine, but she herself got married when she was 15 to a man who was 30. Right after their first daughter was born, the abuse started. Her husband would beat her up every time she disagreed with him, if she complained about anything, if she talked to another guy and sometimes just for existing. There was a period in their life when she was accused of being pregnant with her brother’s child. During that time, she was forced to get an abortion of a child that was three months old in her womb. She told me about her suicidal tendencies and how she takes blood out of her own body with a syringe to paint the walls with it. It was her favorite pastime for a while. I have tried to visualize her story by making a Docu-fictional family album using images from their actual family album and staged images that were created based on the memories she shared with me. – Names have been changed and faces hidden to protect the identities of the people involved.
Short Bio
Shadman Shahid is a freelance documentary photographer born and raised in Dhaka Bangladesh. He has completed a three-year course in photography from Pathshala South Asian Media Academy. After enlisting for a basic photography class in 2011, in order to improve his filmmaking skills, he got enchanted by the medium’s allure and has been practicing photography passionately since then. He likes to work on small isolated communities and personal stories. He has participated in workshops conducted by Gary Knight, Munem Wasif, Abir Abdullah, Jodi Haines, Gael Turine, Swapan Parekh, Ian The and Kosuke Okahara. He has been selected for the 2017 Joop Swart Masterclass. He is currently based in Rotterdam in Netherlands where is he is working on his personal projects as well as studying in the Master at Photography and Society program in The Royal Academy of Art in Hague.
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The Emerging Photographer Fund is supported by generous donors to the Magnum Foundation
