![]() ![]() In 1956, she began her career as a photographer for Begum, the only newspaper dedicated to women at the time. Sayeeda Khanam was the first female, Muslim professional photographer of Bangladesh. Her book Amar Chokhe Satyajit is about her time and experiences with the filmmaker and his family. ("Mahanagar" in 1963, "Charulata" in 1964, and "Kapurush" in 1965) as a still photographer. Khanam befriended legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray after she met him in 1962 for an assignment for the magazine Chitrali. Training in Azimpur field, before Liberation. Consequently, she lost her glasses, sandal, camera strap, and her sharee was torn, but she did not care about such risks. Photographer Golam Mustafa (1940-2021), recipient of the Ekushey Padak, recalls seeing her courageously working at a political procession in Sadarghat, despite being warned by her male counterparts not to go there. She kept regular contact with the women who had been tortured during the Liberation War. According to her lifelong friend Aleya Ferdousi, Khanam rescued and rehabilitated four female war victims from the Azimpur China building. ![]() She also worked as a volunteer nurse at Holy Family Hospital, photographing child victims who were wounded in a grenade explosion. One of the photos she took on that day was of the Muktibahini on the roof of a bus, and of the dead body of a soldier found near Ramna Park.Īfter the return of Sheikh Mujib in 1972, the students of Azimpur Girls School gave him a guard of honour, which was covered by Sayeeda Khanam. After a few hours, she attempted to return to the same place to take photos, but got caught in the crossfire in front of the hotel. Khanam sought shelter in a nearby house while other spectators fled the scene. All of a sudden, shots were fired into the crowd. ![]() She was photographing freedom fighters in front of Hotel Intercontinental, where a crowd was cheering them on. When news broke out of Bangladesh's victory, she went out with her camera and only one roll of medium format film. If only I had better equipment – a telephoto lens and few colour negatives, I could record a bit of the history of these nine months even after being stuck on the second floor of a building." The helplessness frustrated me each and every moment in that time. I could not take a single picture in these nine months. In a 1972 essay, published in the weekly magazine Bichitra, Khanam wrote: "I think I failed in every aspect miserably. This is what she calls her biggest regret in life. But the irony is that she could not take a single photo during the nine-month war, she was stuck in Dhaka. She took this photo just before the war began, at Azimpur Girls' School, a makeshift training camp at the time. Sayeeda Khanam’s article in the victory day edition of Bichitra Magazine, 1972 Courtesy of Bangladesh on Record ![]()
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