The Hazaribagh district in the city of Daka, Bangladesh, means “the city of a thousand gardens” in the Farsi language, and the name gives an idea of what the landscape was like before leather factories polluted everything.
Photographer Kaisar Ahamed has chronicled in his latest project the landscape around the Buriganga River, rendered biologically dead by the poisons poured into the waters by the tanneries. The course of the river now appears as an unreal landscape, the setting for an apocalyptic film in which the dirty water becomes an element of terror rather than life.
Kaisar Ahamed is a chemist, but he chose to conduct his analysis of Hazaribagh’s water through photography. He took water samples taken from the Buriganga River at different locations, building a kind of laboratory in which photography helps tell the story of an environmental disaster.
The title “A Thousand of Gardens” thus sounds somewhat ironic, a mockery to which the viewer is immediately made aware.
You can support the publication of a volume dedicated to the work of photographer Kaisar Ahamed through the fundraiser launched by SelfSelf, click here to find out how you can help make this photography project a reality.
