In Dhaka, Bangladesh, on the banks of the Buriganga River, is an area called Puran Dhaka, or the old city. The photographs in Munem Wasif’s solo exhibition “Kromosho” (“Step by Step,” in Bengali) were set in this historic neighborhood, once the Mughal capital of the Bengal Province. The district serves as not only the site but often the protagonist of his strange, sometimes fantastical work. The series “Stereo,” 2001–22, featured tightly framed close-ups of objects and arrangements in black-and-white, and color diptychs and triptychs arranged as a composition on the wall. In one image we saw a phone—showing a video of a popular Bollywood song—delicately resting against a tea glass. In another we found hair clippings around an alum crystal (used to soothe skin after a shave at the local barber shop), suggesting the object has grown a beard.
Wasif contemplates time and sometimes its suspension. One image showed a digital LED clock on an old wall of this ancient city, said to be stuck in time, even as modern Dhaka expands around it. The pressure of development on all sides is palpable, and a latent anxiety pervades. Wasif clearly knows these lanes and the city’s people, charms, secrets, and traditions intimately. He grew up in a semirural neighborhood, immersed in the ways of a bygone era that people have held onto so dearly. Puran Dhaka is familiar, then, and reminds him of the resolve to preserve a way of life by living it passionately.
