EXHIBITION 'OF RIVER AND LOST LANDS' by SARKER PROTICK
‘Of River and Lost Lands’ is presented at iMPACT DOC as a photographic exhibition accompanied by an audio-visual installation that depicts a grey, melancholic landscape of river Padma (Ganges) in Bangladesh.
At first, the place seems abandoned; drowned, broken houses and floating trees are all that remains. These are traces of life that were once here. As the series continues, the land and the people come into view and find their place in the story. Together they portray a complex relationship between nature and human beings that is intimate yet ruthless, defined by dependency and destruction.
The exhibition shows the direct, visible and palpable effects of changes in climate in the final form of irregular devastating monsoons, resulting in increased river erosion in Bangladesh. Most of the places seen in these photographs do not exist anymore. As a result, these photographs survive as visual documents of such vanished lands.