<i>Haute couture, powder and patch</i>

A photograph by Khademul Insan at the exhibition

Khademul Insan's “Working with limitations”, a solo exhibition on fashion photography opened at the Goethe-Institut on November 12. Inaugurating the chic and belle display were Torsten Oertel, director, Goethe-Institut and noted photographer Hasan Saifuddin Chandan.
Mingling and merging were impressions of the superb ambiance, the models, outfits, and props. The theme never shifts from the focus of the young, experimentalist, who had Anwar Hossain, the internationally acclaimed photographer, in mind. The swishing of silks and satins, the swirls of lace and muslin can almost be heard. The statuesque female figures with their Boticelli's angel faces, the poised stances of models -- with their catwalk watching audience, along with the “powder and patch”-- are cleverly juxtaposed with one another.
The 20 photographs, which are on display for two weeks, create an atmosphere of high fashion. As if one is watching the Fashion TV -- even though the photos cannot move like screen images. One is swept away into the world of glamour and haute couture. Insan has been a photographer for quite some time now, having acquired his basic skills at the Bangladesh Photographic Society. Manzur Alam Beg of the Beg Art Institute was his special guide. Insan was inspired in the field of photography when he went into Alliance Francaise in 1991, where cultural activities are abound. Perhaps the pretty faces that flock the French cultural centre instilled in Insan the desire to capture their beauty for all time to come.
His earlier exhibit at Café Mango, “Plastic flower and mystic beauty” gave him the courage to forge ahead and go in for this big venture. In the first successful venture conjuring up fashion photos, he depicted the difference between the fashion photos and images seen in everyday life. Some of the 20 shots are monochrome while others are multicoloured and Insan likes working in both. At times he has even worked with box cameras where one adjusts the play of light and shade with focusing of the aperture and the distance from the subject.
“There are four segments in the exhibition, beginning from the make up and the warming up, the second includes photographs from Style and Grace, one of the first fashion magazines in Bangladesh, while the third part delineates the fashion on the ramp taken at several fashion shows. The final part deals with our everyday life, of course focusing on 'belles dames', outside the fashion world,” says Insan with gusto.
He also brings in programmes of brief dances, which at times are an integral part of fashion shows. For him the pictures are both art and documentation, he says. “The exhibit is a documentation of the ramp and the style of the fashion. The collection spans from 1996 till today,” he added. He continued saying that his younger brother (a member of the band 'Black'), who is a student of the Institute of Fine Arts, Dhaka University, helped him. He developed his pictures at a local photo studio, while the framing was done by Mithu, who owns a billboard agency. He used several cameras preferring the manual ones.
Insan's limitations with cameras and lenses do not hold him back from displaying the aesthetic sensibility -- which is an integral part of fashion photography.
The exhibition ends on November 25.