Revisiting Bangladesh: Reflections on Migration and Identity Through Imagery

By Bonnie Chiu

As we started curating our second independent exhibition in London earlier this year, we reflected on one major challenge of our first one in 2014. The photos taken by Indonesian and Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong have little resonance with audience in London. Art has the unique ability for us to imagine the “Other” where we have never been; but art cannot exist in a vacuum.

How can our images, focusing on stories of women from seemingly remote places of the world, speak to an audience in pace far away from the photographers’ realities, in our case in the UK?

Serendipity brought me to Lucy Andrew, a social worker-turned photographer. We happened to sit next to each other in the Women of the World event, and we quickly shared our common mission of using photography for social change and supporting personal growth. When I told her that we were planning an exhibition for our Bangladesh project at Rich Mix, she said that she actually worked in a few schools in the East End in parental engagement, and she was still in touch with some Bangladeshi mothers. What better ways to engage with our audience here than inviting these women to a participatory photography workshop? After all, the largest concentration of British Bangladeshis, who make up 0.7% of the UK’s population, is in London.

Lucy, with her experience working in The Challenge Network as a Photography Practitioner and Curriculum Trainer, helped us design a 2-hour Audience Response workshop for a small group of Bangladeshi women. In Lucy’s words, the aim of the workshop was to “hear, feel and receive genuine responses to the exhibition through discussion, photographic output and a short written response.” The two hours flew by as the group discussed how the photos made them feel as migrant women, alongside their overlapping identities as mothers, sisters and daughters.

After a tour of the exhibition, our workshop participants were asked which photograph resonated the most with them. Rayhana, who came to the UK exactly three decades ago, pointed to the photo entitled “Your Vehicle”. Palm leaves are often used as a playful means of transport for younger siblings. “When I was six, I had to escape my village to my grandparents’ home because people were not happy with my mother — who had four daughters. I was the second eldest. This picture reminded me of my days at my grandparents’ house because we had nine months of fun, and me and my sisters used to do something like that.” During the subsequent photo walk, Rayhana took a picture of bikes as a response to this picture. Among modern means of transport, bikes are perhaps the only type of vehicle that still preserve the freedom and proximity to nature?

We also had a Kenyan lady joining the group, as she befriended this group of Bangladeshi women; they say of her that she is Bangladeshi at heart. Indeed, identity is not necessarily confined to one’s ethnicity or origin.

Hanifa Siad came to the UK from Kenya in 1991, and the picture that resonated the most with her was “Broken”. “It reminded me of me and my younger sister. Back in Kenya we lived like this, with the iron fence separating us from the neighbour. The way we lived was very communal. Everybody was looking after one another,” said Hanifa.

In most of their reflections, there was a hint of nostalgia. Bangladesh presents the alternative reality, freedom. Most of the women have been in the UK for over three decades, but the ones born in Bangladesh told us: “Bangladesh is home.” They knew that their kids won’t feel the same. This made me wonder about the significance of our birthplace — does that link to your motherland continue, or even strengthen, after migration?

For one of our panel discussions on global migration we invited Professor Shani Orgad from the London School of Economics who wrote extensively about the role of imagination, often conceived as a private faculty of the mind, in shaping the experiences of both the migrants and the citizens of the host countries. This made me reflect on whether the home of Bangladesh our participants knew was imaginary or reality? Was it fixated in the time when they left? And more importantly: is this notion of home crucial in helping them navigate the challenges as migrant Bangladeshi women living in London?

I am sure the participants all have different answers to those questions. But what they all have in common is their optimism — they inspired me so much with their laughter and energy. A part of them was always Bangladeshi, and they are proud of this identity.

With the evolution of technology and the emergence of digital photography, photography has become instant, affordable and easy-to-learn. And with the Internet, photos can be transferred in a blink of an eye across distances. These aspects of photography have made this workshop possible— far-away images from Bangladesh are shown to a group of Bangladeshi women, living in London. Indeed, what Lensational strives to do is to bring the world closer, through the universal language of photography.

Particularly concerning migration, the defining challenge of the 21st century which has created many divisions and fractures within societies. There is no better time to reflect upon the meaning and societal implications of migration. Through our photography exhibition “Unfurling Bangladesh: The Picture Through Her Eyes” at Rich Mix and through community engagement, we created a unique space for these migrant women to reflect on their life experiences. And these narratives give us a glimpse into the challenges and opportunities these Bangladeshi women have faced — which shed light on possible actions society can take to integrate migrants from all different kinds of backgrounds.