TITLE: First Shower

This is a photo of a 30 min aged baby! This is the child of Dulari who belongs to a Bede community.

Generally a child’s birth is a matter of celebration in every society irrespective of their social status. But in the bede community its just another ordinary day cause to them its yet another mouth to feed.

The environment where this child is born is horribly unhygienic. The child is born with the help of a so-called mid wife with no formal training and who has got this knowledge from generations. The whole childbirth process is unhealthy. The accessories they use like blades to cut the cord, sheets to cover the baby were very unhygienic.

To my surprise, just after 30 minutes of birth they took the child for its first shower. During the shower, they were holding the child in that unusual manner as if they did not care or had no understanding of the delicacy of this creation of God.

For us, a newborn baby is the reason of happiness and the birth moment is the happiest moment in the world whereas for Bede, it is like a regular matter. I just wanted to show that difference through my photography.

AUTHOR: Farida Alam (Bangladesh)

Farida Alam's inspiration for photography comes from people and her surroundings. She loves to experience other cultures, meet different people from diverse communities.
She believes in immersion photography and spends months listening, observing and talking with her subjects over the course of a project. Photography has become part of her identity - a force that makes her think, feel and understand human beings and the human condition. Her work on third gender people, “Reflection of dispersed soul”, hidden for years has brought her various international award and recognitions.
Apart from that her other individual works has got her recognitions of various national and international arenas. Recently, Social Documentary Network (SDN) has featured her work Survived Against all the Odds.
Currently, she is working with different social groups that are deprived of basic human needs. However, at the same time she is exploring their traditional lifestyle and learning from it.
Farida has completed basic and foundation courses from “Pathshala South Asian Media Institute “. Later on, she also participated in a documentary photography course of Counter Photo, another renowned photography institute of Bangladesh.
Currently, she is pursuing Diploma in photography from Alliance Francaise de Dhaka. Also, she is a lifetime member of “Bangladesh Photographic Society (BPS)”.