JULIAN NAPIER
STORIES IN FILM
AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Dhaka
The first time I visited the Far East was twenty years ago and I was naively expecting a similarly intrepid adventure this time around but progress, most notably in the form of budget tourism, has stripped much of the lustre and mystery from far flung locales, whose economies now favour the caliber of traveller whose sense of wonder for a rainforest lasts about as long as a ride on the zip-line through its canopy or the time spent wrestling a scrum of fellow selfie-hunters, for the ultimate Instagram post.
Many of these regions still, however, deliver kinetic and sensory overload and possibly no more so than in Bangladesh. Perhaps this is because it is far less of a tourist draw than neighbouring countries - it's capital, Dhaka is a hive of sweatshops, all conjoined by suicidal traffic and squalid rat-runs, marinated in detritus and fabric dye, and all baked in thick smog at oven temperatures.
There are no tourist hubs or cultural splendours such as those to be enjoyed in a city like Bangkok, no lantern lit, street-food night-markets, gilt Palaces, panorama cocktail bars, river tours, nor $3 foot massage promenades. It's raw, it's visceral, it's putrid, it's unforgiving! It leers at you! For street photography though, it's a crucible of human drama, character and spectacle, and it is bloody wondrous and this series of city portraits is my homage to its incomparable life force.
This is all a work in progress. More images to follow, daily.
