FOTOJAJS

Issue: May - August 2022

Dhaka Opera

Women of Sunderbans Vel Vel

By the Sea : Cox’s Bazar

Special ‘Photo Story’ Issue FOTOJAJS FOTOFEST - A look back

Issue: January 2022

Index Editor’s column Best of the Week: Mar - Jul Photo Essay - Dhaka Opera

by Rahul Talukder What’s Up - FOTOJAJS FOTOFEST - A look back by Rimita Sen Photo Documentary - Women of Sunderbans

by Koushik Chatterjee

Editor’s Column Joydeep Mukherjee 3 4-13 14 - 37 38 - 53 54 - 65

Activities: FOTOJAJS Workshops

66 - 69

Emmerging Talent - Life in Cox’s Bazar

by Manik Deb

70 - 81

Emmerging Talent - Vel Vel by Sannidh Roychaudhuri

82 - 87

Contact us

88

W

hat a roller coaster ride it has been all this while since we published the last issue. As all the readers know we were preparing for the FOTOJAJS FOTOFEST - Chapter 1, it actually got us forget everything else and focus only on the event.

And what an event it was !!! It is now time to rejoice as everything went superbly and accolades came automatically our way. The success of this event has motivated us to gear up for the next chapter and you know FOTOJAJS loves to surprise!!!

T

hank you’s are in order as the success of the event would not have been possible for a number of stake holders. The two judges, Kushal Ray and Hasan Saifuddin Chandan deserve way more than just gratitude. The team of FOTOJAJS and the two associates - Narayanganj Photographic Club of Bangladesh and Club Photo Ceylonica of Sri Lanka had been on their toes all the while. Kudos to them.

Special thanks go to all our patrons and well wishers.

T

his special ‘Photo Story’ issue of FOTOJAJS has abundance of world class content. There are four excellent bodies of work by established as well as aspiring photographers. It’s a perfect combination of works by experienced and aspiring photographers from India and Bangladesh that will surely supply you all with food for thought. We, at FOTOJAJS, loved compiling them and are sure you will enjoy reading this issue equally.

S

tay happy, stay healthy and stay with photography. Keep supporting FOTOJAJS. Come forward with your works as well to enrich our magazine and our readers.

Cover Photo © Joydeep Mukherjee

2

3

Showcase

Best Of The Week Social media followers

S

ince we have a handsome number of followers to our social media handles, we have huge score of photos posted by members of our Facebook group. Elected from the posts every week, on every Monday of the following week, one photo occupies the Home Page of our website for the rest of the week. These are the selected ones for the tenure from March to July 2022.

© Aman Singh © Akshay Mukherjee

4

© Ananway Ganguly

5

6

© Arindam Dey

© Joshgun Suleymanov

© Deepbrata Dutta

© Kuntal Biswas

7

8

© Litan Saha

© Sanjoy Banerjee

© Raju Mondal

© Sannidh Raychaudhuri

9

10

© Saumyakanti Bhattacharya

© Subhabrata Roy

© Srijan Das

© Susanta Sona Das

11

© Ananway Ganguly © Arijit Saha

© Rajarshi Raj Gangopadhyay © Subhabrata Roy

12

13

Photo Essay

Dhaka Opera Rahul Talukder

I

have to pause for a while every time, at the moment, in time when resemblance is about to retain its relation with streets and people in this (old) city of heritage. Its universality unleashes its development which is growing in proportion to my age.

R I

ahul Talukder is a documentary photographer born in Bangladesh in 1991.

In 2011, he joined Pathshala to study photography. Since then, he started working on different socio-political and cultural issues. n 2014, he won World Press Photo Award in the Spot News story category for his story ‘Collapse of Rana Plaza’. He also won Sony World Photography Awards 2015 Professional category - Conceptual, Magnum Photos 30 Under 30, 4th Lumix Foto Festival - Freelens Award & PX3 Prix de la Photographie.

He has been awarded as the highly commended in Ian Parry Scholarship 2014, Runner up in the Alexia Foundation Student Grant 2015 and finalist in the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards - Student Focus 2014. is works have appeared in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Sunday Times and many others international media.

H Rahul Talukder

14

15

I

grew up in this city, thousands of times passing through those streets, sometimes stopping for a while with nothing to do but wonder to see the intervals of changes in every few kilometers. It appears that if the intervals are cropped from the whole cityscape, those parts, certainly, seem not harmonious to the definition of city anymore. To me, Dhaka has not become quite urbanized as one can sense their presence into the ambiguity of rudimentary sketch of the city, thus, by crossing those intervals with the scenario of small town tin shaded tea stall right behind a supermall, then at some distance a locality with rustic surroundings. I can see a perfect continuous alteration of otherness into the citizen’s mechanical and organic solidarities. Row of small tiny houses, slums behind beautiful high-rise buildings is quite common. One of the urges of my undertaking to photograph Dhaka is the people who live in those intervals of progress, their intimations as well as interactions.

16

17

18

19

20

21

T

o show my curiosity over those busy people with their curiosity on a fruit seller about how he would adroitly chop cucumber or pineapple while they’ve rushed around him; and similar rush, of about fifty to sixty people, can be seen before the construction crane, (specially) it wonders me when they move their neck with crane’s arm while it goes up and down; my curiosity over those nervous eyes which have just stepped on Sadarghat launch terminal for the first time unknowingly.

22

23

24

25

T

hough yet many structures from colonial period to 1950s and 1970s’ exist here, pale, abandoned, as a witness of era, may be stood as the sculptural entity of that time in this same yet changing landscape. At This time, it seems very important for me to document these changes of the city and its surroundings. Among so many other things, most certainly, peoples’ lives are changing; their dialects, their clothes, their eye contacts, shoes, the way they walk and even their hairstyle have been chased by the sake of being trendy.

26

27

28

29

B

eyond that, I’ve drawn to the moment that express the ingenuity of the situation, the people who are not always aware of their gesture and attire, things that we all do but somehow manage to ignore or hide from others, and the overall simplicity that this city carries in its realm. Sometimes people hang at the suspended cables over the streets, just to repair it without using any ladder, sometimes the broken divider between the street and sidewalk is the only way people find shortcut to go to their destinations. This is rather, to me, the nexus of entire not-on-this-earth like experience of streets and its people in which the transformation happened, which is not just free from fundamental nominalism but also its elements are inseparable from the fact that changes happen on the streets in relation to the changes of individual lives.

30

31

32

33

34

35

I

t is been half a decade I am roaming around the city and yet there remained many places to explore and document glimpses of life. Every time I walked down these streets most of the time it offers me such Kafkaesque moments. Those moments makes Dhaka as a museum of discrete charm of urbanity. You are welcome too!

36

37

What’s Up

FOTOJAJS FOTOFEST : Chapter 1 Rimita Sen A look back

M

ay 13 2022, we saw our sleepless nights and breathless days taking shape in front of our eyes. Kolkata has witnessed a lot of photographic exhibitions. However FOTOJAJS FOTOFEST stood out for sure with the grandness for the love of photography and talent.

F

otojajs always wanted the members to be in the forefront and thus we did not have a celebrity for inauguration. The participants rather the budding photographers along with our mentor Joydeep Mukherjee did the honor.

T

he exhibition ran till 15th of May 2022.

In total 90 photographs got exhibited from the three nations - India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Surprisingly we found almost all the participants from Kolkata to have fun filled photographic adda during all the three evenings. The happiness for the first timers knew no limit and watching them soaking in the spirit was worth experiencing. Friends and family of the participants also paid multiple visits and were so happy and supportive. As a platform we, the Team FOTOJAJS, were satisfied and happy to curve a platform for the budding photographers of our society.

T

he last day was facilitation day. We had the renowned photographer Sankha Kar with us as the Guest of Honour along with one of our judges Kushal Ray. We had the honour of felicitating our all time support system, the eminent photographer Nilanjan Ray and our mentor Joydeep Mukherjee.

Photo coverage: Debraj Mukherjee

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

I Winner: Nilanjan Pathak

48

t was a whopping 2000+ entries in the first part of the mega event of FOTOJAJS FOTOFEST - an online contest run over a period of two weeks. Shortlisting 100 photos from amongst that sea of submission was a mommoth task. The ones who made it to the final lists got to exhibIt their photos in the main event - the exhibition at Gallery Gold in Kolkata.

49

T

he competition was cut throat and we were compelled to break the rule of marking two Honorable Mentions. We ended up increasing the number and finally picked five for that spot. Yet, we cannot do away with the feeling that there were more photos which should have been mentioned.

2nd Runner Up: Pinky Sanyal Honorable Mention: Shankar Mondal

1st Runner Up: Dipta Saha

I

t’s been quite a challenge for the jury members to select the toppers as there was a tough fight between the final contenders.

They took on each other for single points and the real deserving candidates bagged the first three awards.

50

51

Honorable Mention: Abdul Majeed Abubakcer

Honorable Mention: Nowriin Ansarii

Honorable Mention: Saikat Santra

Honorable Mention: Md Abu Rasel Rony

52

53

K

Photo Documentary

Women Of Sunderbans And Effect Of Global Warming

oushik is an independent photographer. Street and documentary photography is his main point of interest. He loves to document the emotion and the true essence of daily life of common man and in course, tries to unveil various social and environmental issues of our society. When he started to learn taking photographs, he immediately found himself attached to this art form and take it as a medium to express his views and feelings for his subjects.

Since then photography became a passion to him. He has been documenting Sunderbans and its People for over a decade now.

Koushik Chatterjee

S

underbans, this word makes most of us to visualise about vast mangrove forest on delta which happens to be world largest and world famous “Royal Bengal Tiger”. But to me Sunderbans represents an area where people are living just by the dikes and fighting a lost battle against Global Climate Change every day. Due to global warming people are suffering from rising water of the rivers, destruction of vegetation land by advancing salt water, frequent storms and loss of livelihood.

B

y profession Koushik is an entrepreneur based in Kolkata, West Bengal, India with his two lovely daughters and wife. Find more of his work at www.koushikchatterjee.in

Koushik Chatterjee

W

omen of sunderbans are specially affected due to this climate change, they are suffering in all fronts of life. They are fighting with all odds in their house and in daily life too. Sometimes the rising water washes away the house and destroys everything, storms and hurricanes are coming at a regular interval these days to mount the sunderbans, then the women of sunderbans compelled to cope with the situation and helps their family to rebuilt it.

S

torms and hurricanes makes advancing salty water to destroys vast cultivable lands of sunderbans and make them unfertile for years thus making household income at stake. In this situation girl traffickers take chances and girl trafficking rises usually after every major storms and hurricanes.

O

ften to tackle daily needs parents are forced with the situation to send their girl child as domestic help in nearby big cities by school dropping midway.

Men are forced to leave for big cities in search of odd jobs in order to match the domestic needs as there were no opportunity left back in home. Salty water destroys vegetative land and rising water and regular storms disrupts fishing in rivers thus they were left with no options. As the men are forced to leave for the cities the family bond loosens, resulting the breaking and destroying of families.

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

Activities

FOTOJAJS Workshops A sneak peek into the upcoming extravavaganza

W

e provide regular workshops on the genres of Human Interest, Documentary, Travel Documentary and Street Photography. We have delivered a number of successful workshops, mentored by our editor Joydeep Mukherjee in various parts of India.

O

ur upcoming photo trip is scheduled for Bangladesh in January 2023. We’re looking at the time of Ijtema, which is the first half of the month, to take the trip as this would be the best time to shoot documentary and human interest. More details on the trip may be obtained by mail.

Photos: Jhinku Banerjee & Joydeep Mukherjee

R

egular practice of photography helps hone our skillset. FOTOJAJS provides regular trips, near and far, for those who are looking for guided photo trips. We have already covered various destinations in India and are now offering ‘All Girs’ Trips’ also. We have such trips coming up for Rajasthan and Ladakh. The photo below was taken at Sikkim.

66

67

68

69

Emmerging Talent

Life in Cox’s Bazar Manik Deb

C T

ox Bazar which is known as Asia’s biggest beach is also an epitome of beauty for Bangladesh. Tourists from accross the world visits Cox Bazar each year.

hrough my photography I have tried to portray the life and lifestyle of the common people of Cox Bazar along with the happy moments of the tourists.

I have tried to capture the different frames of life from the common places of Cox Bazar. I have tried to extract the uncommon from the common.

M

anik Deb is an immerging talent from Bangladesh. He is based out of Mymensingh district of Bangladesh and is a general member of Narayanganj Photographic Club, one of the leading photography initiative in the country. Manik started doing photography since 2015 and he has an extraordinary eye for perfect frames on the street. Manik has exhibited in number of photography exhibitions in Bangladesh and in India.

Manik Deb

70

71

72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

Photo Story

Vel Vel

Sannidh Raychaudhuri

T T

his is a photo series showcasing the rituals of Vel Vel, a festival which originated from Sri Lanka. Every year it is celebrated in various parts of India, especially in the southern part. his series mostly concentrates on the devotees who go to extreme extents in the name of faith, and that mostly results into them losing consciousness, they keep on banging their head against the ground and keeps on dancing until their feet give up and they loose consciousness. Surprisingly, once the festival ends everyone gets back to normal and they migrate back from an absolute state of trance .

S S

annidh Raychaudhuri is an aspiring street photographer based out of Kolkata. He enjoys documenting scenarios around him with an unorthodox approach. annidh’s photography journey began when he was still in school and was fighting with several health issues. Over time his passion became his profession. Photography has saved him tackle a lot of personal issues and it’s probably the only reason he never gave up on himself. is works have been published in The Statesman, Bartaman, Daily News Hunt, Anandabazar Patrika, Better Photography, Vogue Italia, Amazon, Flipkart,Meteorites, Chizz Magazine and several websites. is works have been exhibited in more than 17 exhibitions all around the world.

H H Sannidh Raychaudhuri

82

83

84

85

86

87

Photography Services

S

ince FOTOJAJS operates as a conglomerate of photographers, with specialists across all genres in their association, one may fall back on us for any photography services required, from Wedding to Corporate Events, from Photo Documentation to Research and Assistance for Documentary Projects.

Contact Points:

Website: http://www.fotojajs.com/ Social Media Handles: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1697776603827462 https://www.instagram.com/fotojajs/ E-Mail: fotojajs@gmail.com activities.fotojajs@gmail.com Phone: +91 9674433000

Team FOTOJAJS Moderator

Social Media Admin

Rajkumar Dey

Subrata Dey

https://www.facebook.com/rajkumar.dey.501

https://www.facebook.com/subrata.dey.33821

Operation Head

Production Head

Rimita Sen

Satyajit Bhattacharjee

https://www.facebook.com/rimita.sen

https://www.facebook.com/satyajit.bhattacharjee.3785

Marketing Head

Country Head for Bangladesh

Debjyoti Chakraborty

Joy K Roy Chowdhury

https://www.facebook.com/debojyoti02

https://www.facebook.com/joykroy

Chief Advisor

Sub - Editor

Koushik Chatterjee

Jhinku Banerjee

http://koushikchatterjee.in/

https://jhinkubanerjee.com/

Editor - In - Chief Joydeep Mukherjee https://www.joydeepmukherjee.com/

88