COMMENDED ENTRY – LITON MASUD ALAM

Liton Masud Alam

Project Title: “Requiem for Freedom”

Project Description

For a human being, freedom is always a relative term. We all have the freedom to think as we please, but can we always express what we think? We are free to fly through air using planes and dive in the oceans using underwater equipment but we can never take off on our wings like birds or breath underwater like the fish.

For the sex workers of Douladia Ghat, Rajbari, Bangladesh, freedom is a dichotomy. Their profession has freed the sex workers from the ordeals of poverty by demanding they give up freedom over their bodies. They are condemned to be free from average norms and restrictions because sex workers are not free to live in conventional society.

This dichotomy pervades every corner of the lives of the sex workers: they feel independent because they are earning money. But they have to turn the money over to the madam or the “husband”. They feel happy because they have made new relationships, new sisters and new families. But they are stuck inside their adopted community. Within the boundary of their community, they are free to dress and behave as they please. But if they should step outside, they have to cover their hair. They are free to love and marry whom they want. But they feel betrayed by the husbands who marry them for their earnings. They are free to strive to reach the top rank of their profession, a madam ruling over her own house. But their self-determination can take them only so far: they are always subject to the licensing powers and the corrupt practices of the police. They are a devout community, free to perform their religious rituals. But they are denied the right to be buried in a proper graveyard. In short, their lives encompass the heights of paradise and the depths of hell.

Yet they have one freedom remaining to them that asks no price: they are free to dream. They dream they are birds that go wherever their imagination takes them. They dream they are living the lives of their fantasies. Their dreams are requiems for true freedom.

Biography

Liton Masud Alam is a documentary photographer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Liton completed a degree in photography and photojournalism at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, Bangladesh. Liton’s prime interests are social issues and human rights documentaries. He believes that photography can be a means to help others by informing the world about what’s happening around them. His photographs have been published in newspapers such as The Sunday Times and SHOTS Magazine in the UK. He won the Bangladesh Photographic Society (BPS) Photo Contest in 2005, was a finalist for the 2009 SOTIRI international prize for young photographers, won the bronze prize for the China international press photo award (CHIPP) 2009 in Daily life, was a finalist for the Ian Parry Scholarship in 2009, was nominated for the 2010 National Geographic All Roads Photography Project, received a Special Mention for the WINE Photo Award in 2010, won the 2010 LUCEO Images Student Project and received an Honourable Mention for the 2010 Photo Visura grant project. Liton Masud Alam has been a member of Asia Motion since 2010.