Amar Bangla

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Bangladesh | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | flickr photos

Hello everybody, my name is Ester and I come from Italy. After graduating in Translation, specialized in Arabic, I decided to go to Bangladesh where I spent about 8 months volounteering in a small village called Chalna, 300 km far from the capital. The only thing I had was a gift by my father: my new reflex camera which I didn't know how to use. So I started practising photography in an extremely inspiring place like Asia, and I returned home with an amazing amount of beautiful pictures, according to those who have seen them. I'm quite satisfied of the results actually, and I feel that I could try this career - but I know I need more training. What I think was most precious in this experience, is that I was able to get to know the people I took pictures of: they told me their stories, they shared their meals and their fresh water with me. For example, this five photos I'm submitting were shot in a hot afternoon before rain season started, in Khalinogor, a remote village in the south of the south, next to Sunderbans Forest. We were there to meet old lady Purnima, who is in the distance adoption program and deliver her monthly supply of rice and ruti (Bengali bread), and take a picture of Tonmoe, the little child with his mother, because his Italian sponsor wanted to see his face. When we left, the whole village accompanied us to the river to wave us goodbye, in an outstanding and incredibly unaware coreography which I captured. I thank Bangladesh every day for making me discover this new ability of mine, and I am determined to go through this path no matter how long it will take to learn.