Rasel Chowdhury was born in 1988, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He takes photograph from childhood as a hobby. After complete his basic course in 2003, start work as a freelance photographer. In 2008, enrolled in BA in Photojournalism, Pathshala, South Asian Institute of photography. He attended several national and International workshops with Philip Blenkinsop, Jorge Villacorta Chávez historian from Peru, Rupert, Shannon Lee Castleman, Raghu Rai, Dr. Shaidul Alam, Abir Abdullah, Hasib Zakaria and, Munem Wasif and so on. His work published in national and International newspapers. And Exhibited his work for five time including Getty Image Gallery 2011. His work has been selected for the Noorderlicht Photo Festival 2011 and Phnom Penh Photo Festival 2011. Rasel produced some very important social photo story among them Arduous life, Vashashoinik, Land for play, Lodrik the home of Old Heroes (Tibetan solder), Waiting for own (Tibetan refugee), Desperate Urbanization And Before the End. He has awarded Magnum Expression Award finalist 2010, And Ian Parry Scholarship winner 2011. He has nominated for the Joop Swart Master class 2011. His book named Under the Banyan Tree has been published in 2011.

Desperate Urbanization

When we are celebrating 400 years of Dhaka City, River Buriganga is fighting to survive. Today, it is nearly dead, can’t run on its natural way. It seems that people of Dhaka are killing the river for their insensitivity.

In Dhaka, people are growing day by day. Working places and various factories are booming constantly. Buriganga River is the one of the most popular way to communicate with another part of the country. Millions of people use the river everyday for bearing their various goods.

Tannery chemical, Mans wastage of whole Dhaka City and Industrial Wastage chemicals directly go down in Buriganga River. Nearly 700 brickfields on the riverside, dockyards and Barn oil from the boats and steamers are the causes of pollution.

This 41 km long river once blessed us with hope and dream to build a new city. But today, the city itself is a cause for the death of Buriganga. We, the Citizens of Dhaka are going to destroy our own river!

As a photographer, I see my role in my engagement with own city. I have an intrinsic relationship with this city and river as I spent most of my life in and around them. As a documentary photographer, my approach was to show the river and its rapidly changing landscape in every possible angle. I explored several corners of the river to have a big picture on people’s destructive involvement. At the same time, divine water of the river, stands alone with its new wave of hope. I just tried to capture all the aspects for a greater concern.

Risk for livelihood

Though catching Shark and making dry fish may seem like toy play for the fishermen, they are bound to do this dangerous job to earn bread and butter. They ignore the nature’s fury, for the shake of their survival in the nature, with no other demand but to earn bread.