Women from Bangladesh

Date
Date: 
2009/11/01
Eröffnung Uhrzeit: 
00:00
Venue: 

AFD, French culture center “Alliance Francaise de Dhaka“, Dhaka, Bangladesh
www.afdhaka.org

Women from Bangladesh

The project: April to May 2007

When I came to Bangladesh in 2007 I had in mind to do a project about a series of portraits of women from Bangladesh.

One year ago I had visited the country for the first time. I was on a visit to see my son, who was doing a volunteering with a German organisation who works together with partner organizations in Bangladesh.He was living in a village in the country, getting to know social field work there.

When I was accompanying him during these visits I was very much impressed by how these women were living and how they were maintaining their lives. Their appearance seemed to me in no way oppressed in spite of their hard lives. They have a very upright attitude, even and soft movements, their behaviour is calm and friendly, they often laugh, they take care of their appearance, their hair and clothes. They are all wearing colourful saris with beautiful luminous patterns.

Since this did not go out of my mind, I decided to prepare a project in which I wanted to get to know more about these women, how they were living and what they were thinking about their lives. I wanted to make photos of them and take interviews. Later, back in Germany these photos should serve me to make the portraits.

This I could do with the help of a woman artist, Syeda Farhana, whose work I had seen the year before, and who offered me to accompany me into the villages and do the translations.

So I was able to take interviews and photos from women with different social background and professions.

When I came to the villages, mostly the women were very poor. They had not been able to go to school and had been all their lives after their marriage only in the place where their in-laws were living. They were working in the house and could not do anything else because they had not learned anything else and their husbands would not allow it.

But also I got to know women of the middle class, who were very educated and dedicated to doing a job, women who decided not to do a job, women who were artists and living a very independant life.

As Farhana was doing these interviews in a very experienced and open minded way, the women trusted her and were also very open minded with their responses, therefore I am very grateful.

Thus I was able to get to know how the women were seeing themselves and their situation, what they were thinking about family life and their aspirations, hopes and fears.

I am very much grateful to them that they let me take part to this and widened my knowledge and insight towards their lives.

 

 

Alliance Francaise de Dhaka 1
Alliance Francaise de Dhaka 2
Alliance Francaise de Dhaka 3
Alliance Francaise de Dhaka 4
Alliance Francaise de Dhaka 5
französisches Kulturinstitut Dhaka 6
französisches Kulturinstitut Dhaka 7
französisches Kulturinstitut Dhaka 8
französisches Kulturinstitut Dhaka 9
französisches Kulturinstitut Dhaka 10