Festival Director Shahidul Alam expressed his views on this year's theme 'Boundaries':

"Photography creates its own compartments. The photojournalist, the fine artist, the well paid celebrity, the bohemian dreamer, No photoshop, yes photoshop. Canonites, Nikonites, Leicaphytes, digital, analogue.

"The haves, the have nots. Heterosexuals, metrosexuals, transsexuals, homosexuals. The straight, the kinky. WTO, subsidies, sperm banks, kings, tyrants, presidents, prime ministers, revolutionaries, terrorists, anarchists, activists, pacifists, the weak, the meek, the strong, the bully. The good, the evil. The hawks, the doves. The crusaders, the Jihadis.

"Boundaries -- seen and unseen -- define our modes of conduct, our freedoms and our values."

Chobi Mela, South Asia's first major photography festival, is one of the many initiatives of Drik, which operates from Dhaka. Drik began operations in 1989 in a small house in Dhanmondi, Dhaka. Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph -- the Association of Black Photographers, London -- remembers hearing about Drik's ambitious aim to be a 'fully self-funding picture library that would act as a hub for images produced by Bangladeshi and other South Asian photographers'.

Since 2000, every two years the Drik Picture Library and its partners in Bangladesh and other countries organise the Chobi Mela International Photography Festival. Over the years this festival has gained immense popularity and acceptance. Therefore, incredible though it may seem, 20 countries are participating in this event this year -- a fact that bears testimony to its growing recognition. At the same time it's not very surprising to learn that the highest number of entries came from Bangladesh itself.

In December 2000 Chobi Mela was first launched by Drik as South Asia's first festival of photography, which incorporated 18 exhibitions, including 'The War We Forgot', a photographic study of the 1971 'War of Liberation' by 30 international photographers, including Don McCullin, Marc Riboud, Mary Ellen Mark, Raghu Rai, Abbas, Rashid Talukder and Kishore Parekh. 'The War We Forgot' exhibition met with a heavy-handed 'request' for certain images to be removed. But Chobi Mela did not compromise; the whole exhibition was moved from the gallery and exhibited at Drik's own gallery.

The second Chobi Mela held in November-December 2002 was themed as 'exclusion'. Shahidul Alam wrote: "There are others who have stretched the medium to its limits. From the concerned photojournalists who have stood up for the oppressed, to the conceptual artists who have taken on social issues as their motif, there have been photographers who have aligned themselves with the excluded, voicing their concerns, and fighting for their rights. This is especially so in the majority world, where photography neither has the glamour, nor the economic returns often associated with the profession in the West. The media however, has become a tool of the powerful. Media distortion and suppression, combined with the acquiescence of those who stand to gain, ensures that propaganda is packaged as news, silence is bought and consent engineered. Each pen that fails to write, each shutter that fails to open, each voice that refuses to shout in protest, when governmental and corporate power flexes its muscles bears the guilt of compliance. This festival, in giving space to the excluded, pays homage to the few who have continued to say no."

The theme of the third edition of the Chobi Mela, held in December 2004, was 'Resistance'. Regarding the theme, Shahidul Alam wrote: "To resist, to challenge, to question, to go against the grain, to deliberately choose the untrodden path is a conscious decision. It is a risky route fraught with danger, but a route we must follow, if change is to come."

No doubt Chobi Mela IV will be very interesting and different from the previous ones (as they always are). Chobi Mela IV received more than 300 digital and analogue entries, out of which 44 entries will be exhibited at the British Council, National Museum, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Bengal Gallery, Alliance Francaise, Goethe Institut, Russian Cultural Centre and Drik. Apart from this, there will be an open-air and moving exhibition on 18 rickshaw vans. In addition to this, seven workshops and discussion sessions will be held at the Goethe Institut, Dhaka.

Since the stage is now set, all we have to do is be patient and await the festival to begin.

The Daily Star is the media partner of Chobi Mela 1V.

Source: Drik Media Cell