Storytellers Summit Day 2 | National Geographic

Prisons because I was interested in what was happening inside of them, but I didn't want to go in as a photographer or in quotes, a tourist looking around. I happen to find out about an opportunity through the Prison University Project, which is a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that offers an AA program to the men inside San Quentin. So, I started going in as a volunteer professor teaching the first-ever history of photography class there.

Although the class was about history and about learning the importance of the image, I wanted the men in the class to also get a feel for what it was like to create and to insert their own creativity into an image. So, one of the exercises we came up with was this idea of mapping a photograph—of looking at it, dissecting what's there, and figuring out how to insert your own narrative into the piece. One of the things that I really love about photography is that it's this generous medium that allows all of us to become part of what we're looking at. It also rewards looking at detail, and I feel like we can understand complex situations; we can understand other people if we understand the details of their life and what they're interested in. For me, photography really stands in as something that can do that quicker.

Okay, so this is one of the images we used. This is a photograph by Eggleston, and what I did was to print the image on two sides of one paper, 11 by 17 inches, and give different photographs to the men in the class. They were allowed to take the images back to their housing unit, live with it for a couple of weeks, map one side of it, and then use their mappings to create a narrative about what they saw in the photograph. I told the guys who the artists were, but really nothing about the photograph. The idea was really for them to investigate it themselves.

So, this is an example of the mapping, and I like the details that he notes. The thing that really stands out for me with Marvin's dissection is where he circles the door and writes an arrow that says "figure this out," as if he himself is trying to figure a way to get out of the photograph—or maybe, by extension, how to get out of prison. I talked about how I think photography is a generous medium that allows us to insert ourselves into the image, and the narrative that Marvin wrote about this photograph was based on his insistence that no matter what I said, this photograph was taken in South Central LA while he grew up. He creates, on the bottom, you can see this complicated kind of family tree about all the people he knew in South Central and what would happen during their daily excursions.

So again, he takes a photograph that has nothing to do with his particular existence and finds a way to make it about something that he can understand. Another example of that is a photograph by Steven Shore. This was done by John, and I really do love all the details that he figures out here. He didn't know the date of the photograph, but because he spent so much time looking at it, he discovered the marquee of the movie theater, and the movie "What's it called? Night Moves" is playing. He remembers that that came out in 1975, and through that, he's able to date the photograph. He also talks about a sign that you can see on the right of the photograph that says "discounts," and he sees how that's a newer sign. From that, he realizes that this is a neighborhood that used to be wealthy but has now fallen on hard times.

The narrative that he creates based on this photograph is one about a man—the character in the center—who's leaving prison and going back to a home that he just doesn't recognize anymore. One of the things that's interesting in prison is that there are no computers, so most people are writing by hand, and that's something I just don't see anymore. So, I also like looking to set the beauty of the handwriting and the way that it's interacting with the paper. This is a photograph that I'm sure many of you know by Joel Sternfeld. If you don't know the story behind it, it looks like there's an intentional fire, and the firefighter is just ignoring the picture. But if you know more about the picture, you know that it's a controlled burn.

And it brings up something that Debbie mentioned this morning during her talk and something I think about a lot with photography or with any creative endeavor. That is that you can start with fact or fiction, but inevitably, one recalls the other. If that's not used in a political circumstance, I actually do find it disturbing when it's used in the political world. But when it's used in the art world, I think it's really fascinating because it talks about how we're always struggling to come to terms with our existence, which is fact and fiction mingling together. So, I just point that out because this photograph is really about fact and fiction.

So, Joseph, who's looking at this picture, obviously notes the fire, and his narrative is written from the perspective of somebody who owns the farm. I'm glad to hear you laugh, and I'm going to talk about that in a minute. So, but first, he writes about the perspective of loss and how his childhood place is going to be going away. But what will never go away is this recipe for a special pie—Mrs. McLean's pie. And when I tell people that I work in prison, people kind of expect that everything I'm going to have to say about it is dour and upsetting and depressing. Indeed, there is plenty of that inside of prison, but there's also a lot of humor and lightheartedness and love, and that kind of thing comes across in that really kind of sweet recipe for pie.

While I was teaching, I did that for three semesters. I was given access to an amazing archive of photographic negatives taken at San Quentin State Prison between 1938 and about 1984. They were all taken by correctional officers as a way to document the events inside the prison. There are tens of thousands of negatives, and they were just kind of moldering away in a storage facility. Nobody was seemingly taking care of them, and I was really fortunate to be given access to them.

Since about 2012, I've been going through them, organizing them, scanning them, and trying to make sense of them. It's interesting to me that the correctional officers were using four by five cameras up until the '80s. I mean, that does tell you that change happens very slowly inside of a prison. But because of that, the negatives are gorgeous, and they make beautiful prints. Although, as I said, they document everything inside the prison—from murders to suicides, two really very painful things to look at, to weddings and parties and people at jobs—kind of all the things that happen outside happen inside, with the added element of violence.

So, the negatives that were not organized—some of them are in these envelopes, and there's a date and a brief description—but a lot of them are open to interpretation. So, the first part of just working with this was just trying to make kind of categories of what I would find, and there were images that clearly reference life in prison, like this escape dummy that somebody had made. One of the kind of, on a side note, one of the things you learn when you spend a lot of time in prison is that there's incredible creativity inside. Because there are a lack of resources, people have to figure out, in many ways, how to take care of themselves.

Although I don't know how this escape dummy was made, somehow it was molded with found material and then obviously using real hair to create the eyebrows and the hair. This is an image of a suicide. This place in San Quentin is called Suicide Alley. I'm sorry, the next image is this pretty gruesome—just to give you a heads up, there are images of traumas large and small. You really have to wonder, you know, why would someone even take a photograph of a single band-aid? And then, there's also really beautiful images that don't reference prison at all; you'd have no idea you were there.

So, this is from a family visit. This is called Mother's Day. You can probably guess from the clothes it's the '70s, 1976. Yes, this one's called "Two Inmates and a Seal." Sometimes the title—and I think it's incredibly obvious—but I also kind of find funny. So, as I said, I was going through the negatives trying to organize them, and on their own, I think they're incredibly interesting to look at. But I also felt like there was a key component missing, and that was figuring out how to collaborate with the men inside to bring this archive to life in a different way.

I mean, I just look—I call myself an outsider. I've been working in the prison since 2011, but I've never been incarcerated. So, when I look at them, I bring my experience as a free person to what I see there. But when the men inside look at them, they're able to interpret them and escort us around the image and show us things that we may or may not have seen, things that we miss, and ways that we can then see the photograph in a new light.

So, I used the same principle that I did with the photographs by well-known men—which was to invite men to become part of a photography group where I brought images in from the archive. We sat and talked about them, and then they were able to bring images back to their housing unit to map and to write about. So, this is a picture of Kevin, who is part of the project. This is in the housing unit North Block.

I want to show you just a couple of samples of those, so here's an image without any writing, without any intervention on it. I'm called "Stabbing in the Gym," and then here's the interpretation done by Ruben Ramirez, who was one of my students and also worked on this project. I just— I love how he writes about the picture, and after reading his words, I can never look at this image in the same way.

It's no longer this cold, clinical image of someone who's been stabbed; it's an image about striving. It's an image about dualities, and it's an image about experience. He writes across the body, which I think is also really beautiful: "The arms symbolize buttresses attempting to prevent the fallen, attempting to prevent the structural failure of a once-proud cathedral—encouragement and enlightenment versus indifference and authoritative tyranny." And says, "I have someone look at an image of brutality and to be able to see it in these architectural terms was really stunning to me." I mean, it's poetic, it's alluring, but it doesn't deny the brutality either of the image.

And then, Ruben is someone who didn't have a lot of education before he came to prison. He ended up getting his AA degree in the college program, but he was so profoundly moved by the image and found this personal and enlightening way to talk about something. I'm interested, obviously, in issues of prison reform and how we can change prisons, and I don't believe that people are interested in that through numbers and statistics. I think we make change through stories and through personal communication, and that's really, you know, what this project is about.

Here's another example of a photograph that was written on. This was at a family visit, and it's kind of an amusing image because there's this man in the front luxuriating, and this woman's laughs, and he can't see that behind him is another man with his hands on this woman's shoulders. You don't know exactly what's happening here. And it's Shahu mapped this very, very smartly at the bottom, just said, "This is a picture of free love," which makes a lot of sense.

Then the final example was an image that was mapped by Shakur, and what appears to be a fight being photographed is, again, this commingling effect in fiction because, as you look at it, you notice that there's a man in the bottom corner looking up at the photographer, and obviously, if there was a fight going on, this couldn't be happening. So what Shakur figured out was that this was a reenactment that correctional officers were photographing as evidence of what an altercation could look like.

So working on all of these photographic projects and thinking about stories encouraged me to work on a very different kind of storytelling project inside the prison, which is the podcast "Ear Hustle," which I started with Earlonne Woods and Antoine Williams, both pictured here, who at the time were incarcerated at San Quentin. Our idea was to tell the everyday stories of life inside prison told from the perspective of those who live it. Originally, the idea was to air it only inside prisons, but while we were working on it, we entered a contest through RadioTopia and were lucky enough to win this contest, and the podcast ended up being aired outside the prison. We're now in our—starting our fifth season.

When we started the podcast, I knew nothing about audio; neither did Earlonne or Antoine or the other men we worked with, so we really had to learn everything together as a group, and I think that's a really wonderful way to start a collaboration, when everyone starts at the same place. So, I want to play a small clip from the podcast. This is from an episode called "Looking Out," which is about this guy Roach, who loves animals and takes care of all kinds of critters inside prison.

For me, the topic of the podcast—this episode is really about finding love and giving love inside a place where it's really hard to do that. For me, the podcast is very similar to the way I look at photography, which is it's about details, it's about observation, and it's about the quiet small things. This clip also really highlights the way the podcast works: Earlonne and I are the hosts that bring you in and out of the story. There's varied emotions within the podcast, and it has a rich sound design, which is all done by Antoine Williams.

Okay, so here's that clip: "To me, I think Roach looks like the original Jesus Christ, you know, a baby. Got the dreadlocks; he's like he's from the earth, and if he could just be wearing a leaf. And he got this one little thing that he do; he just door-sniffs on his dreadlocks. I know I've seen him do that. He grabs his hair, and he pulls it in front of his nose and just sniffs. Hey, you just be looking at me. FYI, I do smell my dreads. I put different oil on each one of them; they smell good. They smell like I just came out the dirt, hanging out with roots and stuff. But you know what, though? When people from the outside look at Roach, they be like, ‘Oh, dude's weird, man. I ain't talking to dude.’ But Roach is a cool dude. My name is Ronald Reaper, but I go by Roach. My relationship with people is pretty strained; I don't trust them. Early on, they have been a source of pain for me. So Roach is about 40 years old, and he's a pretty shy guy until, you know, when I was a child before I was removed from the care of my mom's custody."

She tried to drown me a couple of times in the tub, and then she stopped, and she left the bathroom; she was crying. I knew she was unhappy or sad about something I did. I wanted to actually comfort her, but I didn't know how to do it. I don't remember her face, and I haven't seen her since. So again, that's a really good example of what the podcast sounds like—going from things that will make you laugh to things that are arresting and quite upsetting. I've heard this clip so many times, and every time I hear the end where he says, "I don't remember my mother's face," it's such an intense thing to say. It's not saying, "I don't remember her," but "I don't remember her face," and that's such a profound loss.

And I'm going to end on a little bit of a happier note, though. People ask me a lot, "How do you define success, and how do you know when a project works?" For me, a project is successful when it inspires other people to do their own work and do their own storytelling. This is a picture of Ruben Ramirez, who did this incredible piece, and I think he's watching the live feed, so hi, Ruben! He's very shy, though. So anyway, after we worked on the project together and through talking through Fatima about photography, he told me that he could now see fascination everywhere.

And isn't that a great way to think about life—that we can see fascination everywhere, no matter where we are? The other thing I love is that when the work you do inspires other people to not just think, but to get creative themselves, and it doesn't matter what the medium is; it's the idea that it's created—the impulse to make and to share. And so, I just wanted to share these three amazing things that "Ear Hustle" listeners have done. So whether it's creating a blanket through knitting, or a digital drawing, or incredible nail art, it all represents the impulse that we have, which is to be creative and to tell stories and hopefully connect in a world that can feel very distant and cold.

So, I'm going to leave it there and hope that you all feel the spirit to create. [Applause] Alright, thank you. That was fabulous! And I do go, "Ruben is watching!" Hey, I'm Vince! How are you guys? Yeah, we're thrilled to have Rajah Hat Ali with us today. When we try to match people for these conversations, we look for many different things—pairing differing personalities or shared interests or colleagues. Sometimes, we look for young and dynamic social entrepreneurs, or even an author or playwright in some cases. Occasionally, we'll look for a television host or presenter or a commentator from a place like CNN, or even an op-ed writer from a newspaper like the New York Times, or TED speaker—maybe a lawyer. But never one person who has done all of those things and continues to do many of them.

He's able to keep his sense of humor. A few days ago, he rang in the New Year with a series of tweets charting the last 10 years. “Beginning of the decade, I was completely broke; my credit was shot; I was driving a '97 Camry without a door handle; my health was terrible; I was single. I'll close out the decade with an amazing wife, three lovely kids, a Honda minivan, better credit, and a career. Keep hustling!” was Rajah Hat Ali.

[Applause] Welcome to our little Chobi Mela. For those who don't know, Chobi Mela is the first festival of photography in Asia, and it was created by Shahidul Alam, a singular force who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth—a photographer, author, curator, and activist, but not always in that order. He gave a voice to those who could see but were not being heard—arming them with the language of photography and empowering a generation of photographers to turn the camera on themselves and their culture for the world to see.

There are those in this room who know you personally, those who know about you and your journey, and those who know of you. All of us are happy to see you here today because while you may not have been in this room, your presence and influence have been felt here for many years. Please welcome Shahidul Alam and Rajah Hat Ali.

Thank you, Vince. If I wasn't married, I could score two dates off that intro—that was amazing! How's everyone doing? Thank you for that overwhelmingly enthusiastic response; that was awesome! Lovely thank you to my people, the proletariat, watching from the cafeteria and the spillover. Thank you to all those who are watching us on the tubes, and thank you to Shahidul Alam who has come here all the way from Dhaka, Bangladesh to be with us today for the Storyteller Summit.

Thank you! Today, so, Shahidul, I met three years ago in Dhaka when I was actually working with Facebook, Google, and the UN to help some young Bangladeshi change agents and artists. I just reached out to you through our mutual friend Salma to be a judge, to help mentor these kids, and you came by. We met, and this was before you were public enemy number one. A lot could happen in three years, right?

And I never would have thought that you would be in Washington, D.C. in the nation's capital three years later. You have a very eventful life, my friend. And as we talk about it, I think it's very important. Time Magazine Person of the Year—celebrated photographer. Many people who were watching are like, “Oh, Shahidul is so inspiring! I wish I could be like that.” Who am I? I'm just an average Jose or Joe. And I think the origin story of you superheroes is very important.

If I may, I want to begin with, you know, we've talked before, and I always call you the accidental photographer. And this journey began with an accidental birth. Can you explain that? Okay, well, it was a candid moment. The picture is of my parents and my brother and my sister. My dad's a microbiologist, my mom's a schoolteacher—two kids, nice, happy family. My dad's elder sister passes away, leaving four orphans, and a family with two kids becomes a family of six kids. My mom does extra work; my dad does too, and they make ends meet, but they certainly don't plan on a seventh child at that time.

But, well, it happens. So, it was much later, I think about 29 or something like that, my mother candidly tells me, "You were an accident." Well, did it sting at 29? I really like it. We had a very—well, she's passed away; we had a lovely relationship, and it was nice the way she said it as well. But speaking about your mom, your mother is this forceful foot too, and a dynamo. And we're going to talk about this not only as you as a photographer, as an artist, as an activist, but education runs deep, and it's almost like a genetic inheritance for you. Can you explain that?

Yeah, well, my mother, she's in Kolkata; my dad wants a beautiful, educated, wise, smart madam, completely. But you know, he's a microbiologist in the Army—a very eligible bachelor—lots of people want, you know, lots of applicants, but then he wants an educated wife. My grandmother gives in. She's not really interested in the bride going to university, so my mother puts on a burka; my dad's younger brother takes her to visit her friends, and that's how she graduates.

After partition, she comes over to Bangladesh; my mother wants to set up a school. No one's interested, so she pitches a tent. She buys a tent for ten taka, pitches this tent in the middle of a playground, 14 kids. It's now possibly the best-known school and college for girls in the country. I just want to repeat that—that one woman, a four-foot-something dynamo, takes a tent, pitches a tent, and fast forward five decades later, and you just said it's one of the best-known schools in Bangladesh.

Continue, please. And, of course, in the school, she does more than teach arithmetic and math. Music, theatre—I was involved—that's my mother teaching me to play the harmonium. So all of that is part and parcel of what this is, but not everything was easy. But I'll come to that later. Three women are very important in my life: my sister on the left, Rena; my partner in the middle; my mom on the right—powerful personalities. And it didn't always go too well, but I'll pass on that for now.

But important how they shaped you. I mean, completely. Yours throughout life continue to be. I mean, they're very important women. But other women too, but other very important women—its idea; Runa, for instance. While I was in jail, she went every day to jail. No one could convince her; basically, she said, "I don't trust these guys. I want to be here; I want to make sure you're safe." She made that trip every day.

But the other is my niece Salma here, Julie in Sri Lanka, and Tara in Nepal. I mean, they've all played a huge role. But I'll move, actually, to 1971, which for me was very significant. This is a picture by Penny Tweedy, and she actually gave us that print when we first did Chobi Mela, as was mentioned. And this is a woman going through a field with a rifle. I don't know who she is. She may have disappeared, perhaps in the history books.

This is not a person who will feature, but the war of liberation was our battle. All of us, we wanted liberation, and for me, what was very significant comes to this image. This was taken on the 14th of December 1971—the killing fields of Robbari, taken by a receiver, Lador, who actually won the Pioneer Award at National Geographic before it was discontinued. But for me, what was very significant was how, through that war, I changed.

What happened immediately—this was something that was being done by the Pakistani armies. When they knew they were going to leave the country, they were losing. They wanted to cripple the country intellectually, you know? So the leading artists, scholars, journalists were all invited, and this is what we found on the 17th of December. We got independent on the 16th, I said. The nation was crippled.

My parents wanted me to carry on studying; my sister was in Liverpool, so they managed to cobble up a ticket—a one-way ticket. But, you know, for those of you who don't know what the 1971 war was—I mean, it was, you know, Bangladesh was called East Pakistan. For those of you who don't know geography (Americans are really bad at geography!), there's Pakistan, this small country called India, and then Bangladesh.

So Bangladesh, from the inception in 1947, wanted its own independence, and this 1971 war was one of the worst rapes of the 20th century. It was Pakistani Muslims taking vengeance against Bangladeshi Muslims, and in Pakistan to this day, you don't mention this. It doesn't happen, or if it was, it was their fault, and there is this lingering trauma.

And I appreciate you mentioned that they went after the intellectuals because they always go after the artists, and intellectuals and thinkers—those voices are always the most threatening, it seems, to power. So, no—no, it's important here; I suspect Native Americans get left out, and British colonials get less left out. So there are those accidental omissions, yeah.

But so I'm in Britain, and I'm from a middle-class home, so you're meant to become a doctor or an engineer—that's it, the soybeans business—doctor, engineer, business failure, lawyers—okay, yeah. Anyway, so I studied biochemistry and genetics; I graduated. I then go on to a PhD. Goodbye—yet so far in the box, and that's the stage when I get introduced to the Socialist Workers Party. I get very involved in race issues, class issues, all that sort of thing—Polish solidarity movement, and that's when I discover the power of photography.

Oh, exactly! And I think, does Bangladesh need yet another research chemist? And your mother would say, “Yes, precisely!” Yes, yes, yes. So, anyway, they don't know about this. I'm doing this piece for tea, but while I'm doing this, suddenly, a few pictures, and I decide to test it out to see if I can actually make a living out of it.

And there's an advert in the newspaper for a photographer in a small studio called The Young Rascals, and basically, you take pictures of kids. So I’d go around, spread a skin rug—a blue background—and take happy pictures of kids. It paid well—five hundred dollars a week in those days; lots of money! What I also did was amateur photography and things like that, and then I'm doing nude studies on myself because I'm the only one available. No, but I was—that was interesting; it's all DIY, right?

You had no training; you got possession of this camera and were like, “This is interesting, let me just go out and see what I can do.” And actually, getting the camera was also a bit of an interesting accident because, you know, this was Freddie Laker days; some of you will remember the Laker Airways. Cheap? Ninety pounds—you could get a London to New York flight! So, poor student, this is my chance to go to the United States.

So again, on, I get on a Skytrain. A friend of mine tells me cameras are cheap dollars low, “Buy me a camera from the United States!” So I go to—I’m not sure, B&H was there, but Heston, Jewish shop, you know. I buy a Nikon FM, must tripod, and a rickety tripod—a flash gun and everything. And I go around, hitch... those were the days you could hitch—hitching around the United States, you know, Canada.

Come back to London; he doesn't have the money to pay for it. I'm stuck with a camera. So I take some pictures, and you know, this next one is from that period, and Richard Moses will be jealous—it’s infrared photography! It's a beautiful photo! Thank you! But, you know, that's what I was doing—trying to take pretty pictures.

But this really wasn't why I had come into photography. One very interesting thing happened at that time, because I was taking these pictures of kids, but I wasn't happy about the photography I was doing.

Yeah, so I complained. I said, “What are you talking about? You're a star photographer! You make more money than everyone else—five hundred dollars a week!” Yeah, it’s rushing it! Yeah, I started thinking, you know, if I stay in this setup and everyone tells me I’m a great photographer, I start believing this.

You know, I'm in the zone of comfort, and everyone tells me nice things; that’s too dangerous. So, that was when I decided to make a clean break, go over to Bangladesh; I'm going to become a photojournalist. But of course, I've got no track record. I've never worked for a newspaper; I don't have a portfolio. This is what I want to do! But you know there was money to be made.

And that, my friend, is truth to power. Yeah, this is the war on Christmas, I waved by Muslims. I took rats; I took pretty women; I took flowers—whatever came! Yeah, well, exactly, but something else was interesting. I decided to go back home and live with my parents. They’re very important people in my life. I'd left home when I was 17; I came back as a 29-year-old. I wanted to know these people, and I knew it wasn't going to be easy.

I lived independently for all these years—went home in my parents' house, middle-class home. Their home help, and this little boy, Maison, he cleans what we call the drawing-room where we watch television. You know, except that he's not allowed to sit inside to watch TV with us; he sits outside that doorway.

And what we'd done by then—we set up an agency; I’ll come back to that later. But we were using calendars, and calendars at that time had pretty pictures. You know, we don't have naked women by four waterfalls, but we have, you know, mosques and nature and pretty women, things like that. We decided to use our calendars for social messages. So this picture of me as I'm watching television was printed in our calendar.

I gave a copy to my son; I gave a copy to my mother. The following day, my son sat inside that room to watch TV with us. Yeah, very well. And I think for people—just if you’ve ever gone to South Asia, the class divide is so immense that this is a revolutionary photo—to have someone literally invade and enter that space. It shows you that all politics are personal, and how you can actually change a mindset of your family with one single photograph.

And this was my own family—very immersed rated people. But so what I'm also doing again—I know no one's hiring me to do photojournalism, but there's a general—I have left an independent nation. I've come back to find a general has taken over, so I'm in the streets taking pictures of the resistance.

This treaty Azad was one of them; this was Shaheed Minar. Later on, this young man was very important; on his back, it says, "LED democracy be free." On the 10th of November 1987, he was killed by the police. This is at a campus, in fact, the university where my partner is to teach, where she set up the first department of anthropology. But so I’m taking these pictures—and over a period of time, I’m 88. We have a massive flood; that's when I get commissioned.

You know, that's when people suddenly find an interest. Hama? Yes, be exactly the poverty porn for the West! This struggle for democracy, no one was in corners. But come to the floods, I get commissioned—it’s not bad either. But while that's going on, there is this wedding, the wedding of the daughter of a powerful minister, taking place at a time when the nation is reeling under this devastating flood. Everyone's there; you know the who’s who of Bangladesh is there, but no one mentions a word.

The ministers, the owner of a very, very powerful newspaper—everyone knows the rules. Interestingly, I tried to show this work. It was going to be shown on the 10th of November, ‘89—exactly two years to Noura Saint’s death. Aliyah Small says, "The sponsor backs off by 15 years of the French Revolution—1989.” But that doesn't seem to matter, so I don’t have a sponsor; I don’t have a space.

We put the show up anyway. If you know mine, can you go back to the previous photo and then now just go back to the wedding? So I just want you to reflect on this because in Pakistan, in India, in Bangladesh, this is common. If you were to tell people this, they'd go, "Yeah, this happens all the time."

Why do you think the juxtaposition of these two photos, which are so common and well-known to everyone, among Abish, Pakistan, South India is so dangerous to people? Well, everyone knows, but no one speaks. And I think that's where the difference is—and while those connections are what we make, we don't specify them as such. And here was I challenging a military general, challenging his minister, talking about the reality at a time when the nation was reeling under those floods.

But something else happened. These pictures—the flood pictures, anyway—again, the West is interested in floods and disasters. I shot, so this exhibit went to the Side Gallery in Newcastle and then to a show in Belfast. I'm staying with Irish prince Paddy and Deborah; they have a lovely line, and a five-year-old daughter, Karina. And I'm back from the show; I'm putting some coins in the pocket, and she's standing at the doorway staring at me. I say, "What's the matter, Karina?"

She is, "You've got money." "Yes! I've got money, but… but you're from Bangladesh." Hmm. Five-year-old girl, five-year-old girl! And it got me thinking about the sort of social, political, cultural environment within which a child grows where she's incapable of seeing a Bangladeshi as anything other than an icon of poverty because these are the pictures she's grown up with, and that has been our identity.

So, that's when I decided I’d set up an agency so we could tell our own stories, and it's so powerful, right? Like, when people hear us say that because all you're always whining and complaining—but I’m looking at that frame to your left—what gets in the frame, what gets left out? And what gets left out is the narratives of 150 million people in Bangladesh to the point where a five-year-old girl thinks that someone is just an unimaginable... Well, there is the other side as well.

We did manage to get the General down, and suddenly, the same gallery that had turned our show down because actually they said, "It's photography, it's not art, so we can't show it,” but the same art gallery, once the general goes, accepts to show photography. And in four and a half days—in three and a half days, we had 400,000 people coming to see! Wow! It was incredible! We had near riots at their entrance, and people would just be shoveled in. You know, we had no money; just cardboard.

Right? Yes, exactly! We just had cardboard and behave—that's it! But, you know for us it was still very powerful that photographs could have that engagement and that people were so hungry for those images. How was the response? If you have 400,000 people literally coming just to see photos on cardboard, how did the people respond to the art?

They were blown away because, you see, another very interesting thing happened at that time: the military general had censored, and initially the newspapers crowded redacting spaces, and then they decided they wouldn’t publish. So that was very brave. The military general decided they wouldn’t publish, so the people were hungry. They wanted to see them. Think! We finally got the general down!

So there was a huge response, but what it also led to was an election. And for me, this image was very important because I felt that she, with her vote, was avenging new Hussein's death. But then, you know, elections—we tend to think elections are all there is to democracy, hope, and change, and I soon discovered otherwise.

This campaign—this is Khaleda Zia. She later became Prime Minister on a campaign trail. It's joyous exuberant; this is Khaleda Zia after she gets elected, and you know, the relationship between her and the public sort of changes. But of course, it's true for all of them. Again, we had taken all these pictures. No one was interested.

The 29th of April 1991—a cyclone. Suddenly, everyone's interested in pictures again, and the New York Times contacts us. "We want those pictures." They sent a sample picture. We have them, but, and you know, we've just started a small agency. The New York Times—a big client—we don’t really want to lose this, but film. You know, you got to stay, so we write to them to say we got those pictures, but we don’t think that’s the story. So Nancy Lee, the deputy picture editor, to be fair to her, says, "Okay, tell us what the story is."

And we did a full-page spread on the New York Times about farmers replanting seeds, fishermen going up, fixing their boats, people helping each other. To the best of my knowledge, possibly the only photo spread at that time that didn't dwell on bodies. So that was important! But we felt, yes, it can be done.

But we also thought of other things. You know, while I was questioning what white breasts and photographers got me into doing, but I, as a male, middle-class photographer, was also someone in power. You know, if I'm photographing a woman who doesn't have a daughter shot on my face, the control is with me, and she very rarely gets to decide what image it will be.

So we decided we would challenge our own position. And so, this is a group of ten-year-old working-class kids. We started teaching photography. Zero, and both girls are significant. The girl on the left is Drubeer; the girl on the right is Molly, who later became my assistant and now is an editor in one of the leading newspapers.

So the first day I'm working with them, we did this. We also started training women photographers. The first day we're doing this, I show pictures to Molly and other kids, and Molly looks at this picture—this is a picture taken by one of my students, Azhar, who has passed away sadly. And she says, "Oh, that's the fire in Number 10! What happened in Number 10?" "What’s it? Is he—the owner took the bodies in Dublin and re-did it." Hmm. How do you know?

Everyone knows what happened. Nothing ever happens. She says, "If I had a camera, I'd take his picture. I'd put that guy in jail." No, you know? I am a photojournalist, and we know our pictures often don't make a difference. But the fact that this 10-year-old girl had that belief was something that that fired me up.

And again, if you don't mind me asking, when you—when she was given a camera or when she was given your mentorship, but when she, I'm assuming, had someone like you just believe in her, what was the change, if any? No, well, look, firstly, we just had fun! We just stuck around, and I remember the first day I said, "Where do you want to go?" So they gave a whole list—they’d go to Cox’s Bazar, they'd go to Sunderbans and photograph a tiger.

They’d go to—this was a huge list of what they were going to do that day directly there, and I had a little station wagon, and there were 11 kids—there were meant to be 10, and they took another one on, so there were 11—they’d all get into this. And every five minutes, I had to stop the car to change so someone else would sit in the front seat! That's how it went.

We had fun, and the pictures in themselves were interesting, but I think what for us was more interesting is they were telling their own story, and they were telling very powerful stories that were not being told up until that point. And we might not have time to show that, but that became important.

But I also began to look at other things. And this was a series where I worked on the river Brahmaputra. I showed this simply because this is also the time when I'm trying to make the international connections—the river and how it links. This is a river that goes from China to India to Bangladesh and how different countries control rivers and how the relationship people have with rivers changes.

And that was the first time I went to Tibet, and then what Fiona's Green—who played a very important role in free me when I was arrested—was very involved with the Free Tibet movement. So, if she wanted us to show you—now, now this is the step in your career where you're an international troublemaker. But getting in—I’m a national troublemaker too, so we have this show.

I don’t know; I’m not going to deny that role, of course. This is Professor Muzaffer Ahmed, who was the chairperson of Transparency International, whom we invited to open our show. But a show on Tibet—Chinese government leans on our government, who leans on me, closes our show. So we have the opening in the street.

And the government provides a nice backdrop; they were there to protect you. Well, absolutely! You see more protection later on—they're aficionados of art, of course! Yes! So, but then I also look to see how else I can make work because, you know, if I’m working very directly, then shows get stopped more easily. So at that time, there's something that's happening called “crossfire,” which was euphemism for extrajudicial killings.

And I decided to do a show on that. This is something that was bothering people very much, but you know, the Rapid Action Battalion, who did the killing, weren't going to take me along! Yeah, by the way, we're about to do a crossfire, and I come along to take some pictures.

Yeah, so I had to find another way, and I didn't want the clothes show to get closed down. So what we did was a lot of research—I mean, I created images which we felt were the last images that the dying person might have seen. But we knew something else had to be very significant.

When I showed the earlier picture of the wedding, it was turned down everywhere, but it was reviewed by a magazine which belonged to the wife of the minister, and I was very surprised! You know, this show is being reviewed in the wife's magazine! But they gave a beautiful review of the artistry of my work—the strength of the composition, the black-and-whites, and all that sort of thing—completely ignoring the politics, of course!

So I decided, okay, my work will have the politics embedded within it so they cannot separate it. So this next work that I did—all the pictures were taken at the time of the killing. When I spoke to the survivor and well, to the family members, they talked of how torches were shown on their faces. So every picture was lit by torchlight, and the data was in a Google Earth map, and you had to dig for it. So you would then come and see how in this pristine paddy field, there was a body, and the paddy field was undisturbed, and the body had several bullet holes, but the shirt he was wearing only had one.

So slowly, the story begins to unravel, so you literally went to the killing field and revealed it, and I’m also trying to find other ways in which—but the politics and the art are intertwined, isn't it? But it's interesting your Trojan horsing in completely because you have to—within the constraints of the society you live, and we're showing a photo. Well, now I'm allowed to show something, but also I actually found this to be more powerful, and this was perhaps the most effective exhibit we've had.

In private conversation, the Rapid Action Battalion has actually said that this exhibit was the most difficult period in their career that they had to deal with. Yeah, if you don't mind if you can impact the—why do you think this image had that effect? What's the power of this?

I think the questions are great because they show—and there were policemen outside. So I interviewed the police, and I’m asking him the same question. You know, he says, “It's a paddy field; it’s a problem.” He says, “Yeah, it's a paddy field.” They do look at the word crossfire, and you realize what must have happened in the paddy field. Do you make the connection? That's why people worry. That's why.

And I said, “Does everyone know what crossfire is?” “My three-year-old daughter knows what crossfire is!” I'm filming him while he's doing that, and then later, Susan Hi—we were talking about this at Tate Modern, and I showed that film. So this policeman gives a wonderful conceptual analysis of my work, which I then include in my work itself. So that's the way we work.

But I also started looking at other issues. At the indigenous community—indigenous, by the way, is something—let me show you this. This is the technique that I developed specifically for this work; it's on straw mat, which is where what the Burys is to sleep on. And it’s been burnt by a laser beam, and it's a process I developed for this—for this work. Because a lot of my work at this point is about disappearances—about the missing.

Photography is very good at rendering the visible; it's not as good, or it doesn't lend itself as naturally to what is missing. So a lot of my work since then has been about what is invisible. And I was telling these stories—these are the settlements of the Bahai's who’ve occupied this space. But it's a woman called Kalpana Chacma who was disappeared by the military, and I'm doing this story 17 years afterwards.

And in this dark place, when you go into the galleries, the first expression—and then a very powerful poem written in the Bihari language, by the way. The word "indigenous" is illegal! In fact, you can get jailed for using the word! Our government bans. If we don't have indigenous peoples, so these are people we need chanting back to St. words, responding—this is interesting. They closed down the Tibet show; they closed down the crossfire show. We knew when this was happening that the military was surrounding the gallery, but they didn't close it! We gained some space!

But we've continued to do the work, and we've done it in ways in which I think makes it more difficult for them to stop. But I'll move on. This is a picture I took in 1996. Steven Mais might be somewhere in the back in the audience, but yeah, he was then with Network Agency, and they were doing a story on HIV and AIDS.

And I recognized that it was important, I showed in my country because, at that time, the images of HIV and AIDS were about skeletons, doom, and everything else. So we wanted to deal with the stigma, so I do this story, and the woman sitting there laughing is Hadira. She’s a sex worker, and the grounds of the House of Parliament—that's a beat. We became very good friends; we've stayed friends ever since.

And that's also one of the joys of, you know, how you live and work less than three miles from where I was born. This is my community—these are people I know. And Hadira, you know, she had a very difficult life. She was gang-raped as a child; she knows, really, very, very difficult life. And then I discovered that she'd taken all her savings to set up an orphanage.

Great stories; we're going to love that little pod. and when I asked her, you know, I found out she doesn't take a salary. So how does it go? She says, “Well, you know, we helped and other people that helped. You know, I have a roof over my head, but my kids eat; I eat. I have 30 kids who call me 'Mom.' What more can I want?”

Yeah, and of course, you know the floor is the slate and she’s very strict. They have to pray; they have to do their studies. The handwriting is actually beautiful! Yeah, so anyway, that’s why—I mean, it's so important, right? Because like regardless of society, it's sex worker stigma, yeah? And then AIDS, especially in South Asia, you don’t talk about it.

And if whoever gets it is of course a sinner, and then you show this photo that this person, who's a sex worker—dealing with this—is actually using their life to empower others. It's so radical and disruptive. She's such a beautiful woman too!

What we also did with the Positive Lives work was that it was the first time we showed gay people—they don't exist, right? Well, we have a health minister who said we can’t have AIDS because we are a Muslim country anyway! So along with that, we're doing other things in it, you know? I'm showing my work, and I had my first show at the Goethe Institute. I invited all my friends, my clients, but also the janitor, the cleaner, and everyone else I used to know.

No one went! None of them, none of the subaltern went to the show! The people—yeah! Exactly! So why didn’t you go? And they asked me a very pertinent question: Would they have let us in? Mmm-hmm! There is no rule that prevents them from going in, but I suspect that another doorman of the same social class would have stopped them from going in, thinking that was his job to do.

So, I thought, okay, if they can't come to my show, the show must go to them! So in Chobi Mela, we’ve got things like this—we’ve done shows on boats! We've done shows on camera public exhibits! Exactly! If the people won't go to the gallery, the gallery will go to the people.

And I just wish we could just stay on this for a second because we need this in America—big, right? Who can afford some of these tickets? And it's not that we don't have an appetite for it—we do! The proletariat and the commoner would love to see beautiful art if only there were some times allowed in or could pay the price for the mission! Just saying, continue!

What we also did was we looked to see how stories could be told, and I don't—I'm not showing the picture here, but I'll tell you a little story. Again, during the floods, I have a camera, and if you have a camera, you're a journalist. You know, that's what the assumption is. These kids want me to take pictures. So it's nice light; I cater to this. There’s a large open window—Rembrandt-like soft light coming in—and stand the kids by there, standing up at attention, posing away.

I take the picture. I realize that there's a kid in the middle; he’s a blind boy. Why is it so important for him to be photographed? And I’ve thought about it a lot. I mean, essentially, in mainstream media, and media generally—the people who matter are the stakeholders, and that happens to be the Punto pace by the newspaper or whatever the shareholder and advertises—no one else matters!

And certainly, the rural poor in a country like Bangladesh does not matter, so that story never gets told. So what we started doing was to give the iPod Touch. This is 2011; we worked with World Press Photo. We set up a partnership, and we started training journalists in the village to tell stories—multimedia stories from the village—which went directly to mainstream media.

Actually, it didn't go to mainstream media; at least not in Bangladesh—they weren't prepared to pay for it! There had to be an economic model; it didn't work. But Deutsche Welle does publish it, and we put it online, and there are about 1,500 stories from rural Bangladesh, and were they for once the protagonists of the narrative? It’s their story! And I think just, you know, a quick aside of what that blot—the story did—you just said—it's so powerful about the blind kid who knew, like even though he can’t see, he wants to be in the frame!

Well, and he wants to be represented also! Well, there is a bigger point, you know, for me, why was it him important? I think that rural poor child will only exist as a statistic when it comes to the media when it's large numbers or things like that. You and I will be individuals; they will not. But if a photograph is taken, that's the time when that person exists as an individual! A human powerful narrative!

But of course, we used our work for other ways there as well. I mean, we were very much about social justice, about human rights, and when one of the many attacks on cars that took place, we held a show to raise money to send to the Palestinians! So we were doing all those sort of things. There was the agency; we also set up the school, which became a very important school at a later stage.

And this picture is of Professor Yunus at the award ceremony, and you'll notice the girl on the right—that's Rabiya, who you saw much earlier looking at the contact sheet many years ago. Yeah, and the school did very well! For me, what was very important is, you know, when I started the school, I was the only local teacher, and I would arm twist my friends. Very generous to come and sleep on my floor and teach, and they did!

Robert is there, and many other people have been teachers there. But for me, it is very important today that out of our 26 teachers, 24 are former students! It’s organic—they're the ones who set up the school; they take the art. I play all the time; it’s just one of the pipelines we should employ everywhere! Yes! You just student to teacher!

Well, exactly, I’m very fine teachers—students and teachers as well! This is, by Taslima Nasrin; many people know this image quite well-known, and this is by Assad for some unknown magazine. You know, but they’re getting up-and-coming magazine! Yes, yes! It'll get—the independent? Watch out for it—buy shares! It has a future!

And when this was done by your former student? Yep, and Taslima is now a teacher, so both of these pictures are magazine! That’s so powerful—a former student, a girl in Bangladesh who known who would invest in you, gave her a camera, you gave her a little bit of training, you just invested a little bit—just a little bit of your time and caring to her. And you fast forward to three decades, and she has a photo on the cover of one of the most prestigious magazines that photographers from around the world would die for—a cover photo! That’s thanks to you! Thanks to us!

A lot of people go, but I should also mention the picture of Professor Mazar with the police at the back; that was taken by Andrew Barraj—again, a former student who was with Reuters afterwards. But anyway, so let's move on. So this is the backdrop, which is an amazing action shot! My friend, this is your last book profile!

Well, there you are, that's my tea! Dean, who took this picture, and yeah, so these are what's been happening, and you're in the thick of things by now! I’m, I’m actually being able to make a living as a photojournalist; before, I wasn't. So, but while this is happening, there are other things that are going on.

And this is—this is powerful! These are the stretch marks on the suit of a garment factory as people are trying to flee the fire! Yeah! This is the story in fashion! What was the response to this photo in Bangladesh? In Bangladesh, it didn't get used very much because mainstream media—it’s too abstract and things like that—it got used in my own story, and there it had a very powerful response. But it didn't get used by mainstream media!

But we had other ways of dealing with it, so part of this story was off the carcass of the same time, and I took this picture—I took a picture of a panorama of the carcass of the factory. What happens in garment factories? I mean the fashion industry uses garments, so we decided we’d use their space to show the work.

So this is a billboard we set up outside the building, which is the owners association of the garment factories, and what we did was we actually smuggled in audio tracks of the wailing of the people who played it in the middle of the building. People came out hearing this sound; we had performance outside, and there’s this—they don’t know what the heck’s going on here. You know, they've just run away from this wailing to come up to this, and I do need to tell you—I know you might have had the impression what I’m saying all this—that our government isn't receptive to the arts. You know they gave us a backdrop!

Earlier on when we had this show, they received us; you know, they respond to things like—they love art! Yes, exactly! Simply showing that, and then I go on to other things. This is a poem I wrote—the Sundarbans. We are the world’s largest mangrove forest, even a UNESCO Heritage Site. At the moment, there is a coal-powered power plant being built there, in collaboration with India.

Because we beholden to India, so you know while we owe a lot to India for our independence, the fact that you know we are now pretty much owned by them is an issue! But this story is problematic for a different reason; there has been a young boy called Abrar Fahad, who was murdered because he critiqued India on social media. You know that’s how difficult it gets! I’ll just skim over some of these.

This is really powerful! I mean, I hope—how—let's do it. I think it's a sin to bore an audience! How are you guys doing? Are you guys with us? Alright! And Shahid, I realize we’re the enemies keeping you from lunch, but you guys are with us, right? We’re good, alright, good, look—we'll find—this one is beautiful because where do you guys think this photo was taken?

That’s—that's a question for you guys. Anyone? We’re like what structure? What building? Guard? Okay! Tell them the answer. It’s the Baitul Mukarram Mosque! It’s a mosque! It’s the interior of a mosque, and in fact, that was also part of the idea.

No, there are conservative groups who think photography is haram—forbidden! Forbidden! In many homes, when you pray, you turn the photograph around, particularly if you have figures. So I thought, okay, if I’m going to intervene, the space itself will be my intervention.

So I decided I would do a show in a mosque—no way! You know, so I thought this is a beautiful mosque, Eldhita Roof, which is designed by a woman, Marina Tabassum. The land has been donated by her grandmother, so there’s this woman’s involvement as well, and I thought, okay, I spoke to Marina, and we looked to see how we might do it.

So, the original mosque of the Prophet in Medina had a very different purpose to being merely a place of prayer. It was a cultural space; it was a community center; it was where education was getting; it was a health complex. He received foreign dignitaries. Women could stay there; there was an artist's group from Abyssinia who came and said we need a place to perform, and he said, "Use my mosque."

So, it was also an exhibition space. So, I told these people, you know, I want to take your mosque to where the Prophet had intended it to be. Now that's a pretty powerful argument. It's very, yeah, so not too easy to turn down! And I said, "Well, one condition only: everyone must be able to go to the church." Mmm-hmm!

So we had the show inside the mosque, and people who'd never entered a mosque before came to this place. Now we did have a slight problem before that because there was a local mafioso who was not very happy about this, and we had to take the show outside. We did it in the grounds, and then the women, the kids came, and said, "Why is it not in our mosque?"

So they took it inside the mosque, and I am nothing but—this is a show we’re hoping to tour in other places as well because Islamophobia is something also I’m very concerned about! It’s very transformative—not just for Muslims, but also for those who are otherwise Muslims, especially in the United States right now! Please continue!

So the raw anger situation! So I'm photographing that, but what I need to tell you is that I've been photographing the Rohingya from the early '90s. It's a story now. It's a story that's been there from the '70s!

Yeah, so I was in the boat with these group of people coming back, and the baby with a green—in the green, you’ll see the picture later on. I could see the mother was tired, so I took the kid, and she was quite happy, relieved, not to have to carry the kid. And the kid was—I like kids, so we get along!

So the kid was with me, and you’ll see that picture later on. But a more interesting thing happens—a more recent thing happens. This is August 29th of July 2018. There’s a road accident, and two students get killed, and students come out in protest. And while I'm photographing this, I realize that the government has released their mafioso with machetes attacking these unarmed students.

And I'm reporting live on this. I give an interview to Al Jazeera. As a result of that interview, this happens, yeah? [Applause]

Yeah! I spent some time in the entertainment of the government. I mean, if you—and you have a very nice—if you were about that—which is very lovely, I think it keeps you sane. But they tortured you initially! I was tortured, and then they offered a deal, you know? Everything's forgotten. All controls delete. We take you back home, nothing on the record; you stay quiet.

And that was the condition! No, I could—no! I could say quiet; I refused. I got taken to court. This is a picture of me being taken to court. I spoke out in court; then I got put in remand. I spent six days in remand. I go to jail; I spend time in jail. But while I was there, so many people across the globe—and I see many people here—but in Bangladesh, where it’s so much more risky to do that, people took incredible risks to campaign for my release!

It was really unbelievable! And for me being in prison, it meant a lot—not only to me but also to my fellow prisoners, right? Because they recognized that this was a people's struggle against a repressive regime. So, I’ll just show this picture.

This is also taken by someone invented, and that’s the same kid taken during the wringer period. So this was part of the campaign going on, and these were people—some unknown people who, you know, stood up for me. Desmond Tutu heard about it. [Applause]

But I say that in jest, but people came. I was an intern; it was a multicultural alliance that came out to help you and many of your peers here who were just outraged by the fact that you, who have done so much for art, for your community, for education, simply for trying to tell the truth, were arrested and tortured!

Well, you were the Time Magazine one of the Time Magazine’s 2018 People of the Year—rightfully so! And so it's the least that the rest of us could do! And that's the power of an artist, and that’s the power of a storyteller—that the story eventually escapes. It can't be contained, and so many people here love you and invest in you.

That's also why they came out! They know people, you know, there are many people here I don't know, so if some of you can put me in touch out there, I still would like to thank them at some point, but that’s another story! Media!

So what the government has done over this period of time is—pretty much demolished all the institutions—the judiciary, the police, the education system—all of that's gone. So this is the press club in Bangladesh, and those are pictures of the Prime Minister dangling from the press club. Where is that?

“Drink the new building we're trying to build is Asajj.” And I should bring it home. I mean, this dissent is not appreciated wherever you go. So it’s not so—well. So we also have our own version of access journalism, absolutely.

But I was then going to do—while I'm in jail, this is my sister. My partner—they come up, and you can't talk. There's so much noise in there; it’s very difficult to converse. So they have a little sign saying, “Do you want to do a show at Reuben?” Well, why not?

So anyway, and that decision was made while I was in jail. Later on, we were able to work on it, but even in jail, you're a troublemaker! So stay faithful to your lawyer! You’re consistent! Thank you!

But one of the things we did was, of course, I had been photographing the invisible, but now I don’t have a camera. And that makes photography a little bit more difficult. So what I did was I started working with my niece Sofia, who’s an architect and an artist, and we thought, rather than work with Google Earth maps and things like that, we’d bring a memory!

The memory is a perfectly valid source, so I spoke to her, and she started making 3D models based on my period in jail, and this one is of me feeding the sparrows from my jail cell. So, this is in the Rubin show right now—this little model!

But one of the things that’s happening now is because of the situation I’m in, I can no longer move around the way I did, so I gotta find other ways of producing work! I no longer have the mobility; I can’t go around on a bicycle; this is too dangerous. I don’t use a mobile phone; I have to constantly let people know where I am.

So, my normal way of working just is no longer valid, so I've developed other ways of working, and this is a story I’m now doing on survivors of torture, but it's using a small mobile studio which I can take because it’s not safe for them or for me. And we can find a small clandestine place where we can work selling the studio, and I do these portraits and I talk to them about the moment when they were in that situation, and it’s painful, perhaps, but it is a space we try to go to.

So this is work I'm doing now. This is the building where Drake and Parsley are going to be. So, my challenge now is succession. I want to hand over to this next generation, and we also have to live several more decades! So just buy out the retirement!

Okay, okay! But anyway, so this is the new Rick Bachelor building! Great! Which we will move into in March, hopefully. And I will end with an image which for me was very important. I mean, I was looking at the jail pictures and other things—not that I'm recommending jail, but I actually had a very productive… I firstly—I mean, prison was very fruitful for your artistic career, but also I used that time to its maximum.

You know, I interviewed people every day in it. It's not so difficult. You know, people have time; no, you don't need to make appointments, you know where they live!

Yeah! So I could go and do appointments which I did! I did all these interviews of whatever the prisoners took such good care of me right, and there was one instance where I was put in a special place where ordinary prisoners weren't allowed to go—they sneak in my room, took away my mosquito net, repaired it, washed it, put it back in because they didn't want me to get bitten by mosquitoes.

And all sorts—at every level, the things they did! But for me, the most important one—I showed you the picture of the river earlier—that was deliberate because this is a mural that my fellow prisoners have painted for me inside prison. It's there now.

So amazing! Yeah, if it’s, you know, it's a testament to your—not just your creativity and your artistry, but your spirit—it's the generosity of your spirit, which has touched the prisoners, which has touched students, which has disrupted and angered the right people, and we've run out of time.

But entertain me for two minutes if you can because, you know, Shahid kind of glanced over his life right now! He goes, "Oh, like, you know, I just ride in my act, I can ride my bike anywhere!" Your friends are being squeezed to isolate and pressure you! Money is being tightened!

They are doing all of this to restrict your art, to hurt your financial sustainability! I mean, he has paid a price, and I just want people to kind of realize that he’s still paying the price right now! Things are very difficult for him! And Daca, and yet he’s still doing this!

And so how can we help you take it to the next level? Firstly, I think you need to challenge your own government because, yeah! And I'm not merely talking about the political situation! You know, the reason these things happen is because it's made to happen!

So, you know, there are people—there are countries that talk about human rights and democracy, yet we've had a government that's still an election! We've had what's happened to me—what's happened to me is minor compared to what happens to many others! Yet as far as the international community is concerned, it is business as usual!

Because they would much rather work with a planned dictator than with some messy democracy! And as long as my government is prepared to deal with the raw anger issue and deal with the war on terror and, you know, create the deal with your agenda—a few human rights abuses—it’s okay! They don’t really mind that!

And I think those tough questions need to be asked here, that’s one! The other is I am interested in the people—I'm one person! There are so many people back there who are working incredibly hard, and I think we need to find ways in which we strengthen these institutions so that they can be robust and they could withstand.

Because one of the things I'm often asked is, "Okay, this government. Is the other government much better?" Either way, why should we choose the other one? It’s the wrong question because given impunity, Gabriel would be corrupt!

And I think we have a system where if people can get away with anything—while that is the case while there's no accountability, while there's no transparency, you will always have repression and corruption. And I think what has to change is not the people necessarily but the system! And that we need to work together!

Right? Well, since he’s not going to do it, he can also help him by buying his book, which has the story and the photos, and also talk to someone who’s right here because he has a brilliant idea to take that photographic exhibit that he showed you about how he disrupted the mosque and tore it with other faith communities in New York.

And to put a final button on it and to take us to lunch! You were an accidental birth; you were an accidental photographer! And what people might not know is you were accidentally named because your name at birth was not Shahid!

Oh, and on that story—okay, well my father's Professor Massoud, quite a famous man! I didn't know this; we have a library back home, and I'm digging through that, and I come up with Monsoons Media, which is named after my dad. But you know, he forgot to mention that!

Anyway, so my mom’s quite well-known. My brother and I—we decided we didn't really want to be known as the children of famous parents; we wanted an identity for ourselves. So we went to our parents and said, “We want to change our names.”

“Why?” and we gave them this argument—they thought it was a reasonable argument! So I was given the name Shahid Alam, which actually, the way it's built, at that time, was a witness of the world! At some point, it became the martyr of the world!

So I’m not sure quite where I stand right now! Witness—let's stick with that! And actually, there’s a reference in Egyptian mythology about linkages between witness and martyrs, so—but that's another story! Give it up there—to Shahidul Alam! Witness of the world!

[Applause] Thank you very much for being on topic. Thank you! You’re the one—we'll take a picture. Nice! Take a picture this way, thank you! Don't go away; I'll take a picture of you! Well, it won't be a selfie! Can you guys just—yep, kinda—no, I'm gonna make this pun, wow, I've been... suiting! Thank you, buddy! Take them!

Well, thank you everyone! A reminder: cameras can be cleaned, your badge is good for admission to the museum across the hall—there are two great shows in there and 20% off in the gift shop! And buy a Taste videos upstairs! Take your belongings with you, please! We'll start back up at 2:00 p.m. in this room!