Bagerhat, Where Rivers Shapes Our Days with Farhana Satu

-What format you like using, what are you currently working on if you are? 

I’m Farhana Satu, 33, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I do documentary photography, combining them with Alternative photographic processes, such as salt print, cyanotype etc…

- What about your surroundings/environments and upbringing interested you? 

I grew up in Bagerhat, where water was not just a backdrop but the rhythm of life. Rivers shaped our days — sometimes calm, sometimes violent. The Sundarbans was our neighbor, a vast green shield, mysterious and alive.

As a child, I watched how the land and water gave us everything — food, stories, belonging. But I also saw how the same water could take it all away during floods and cyclones. This duality — of beauty and destruction — stayed with me.

I was especially drawn to the quiet endurance of women in my community. They carried water, fished, cooked, cared, and often suffered in silence. The environment, with its generosity and its cruelty, shaped not only my childhood but also my way of seeing the world. It made me a witness. And later, a photographer.

- When was the first time you met photography? How did you feel when you met it?

The first time I met photography, when I was six or seven years old. My uncle handed me a Polaroid and I held a small miracle — click, shake, wait — and a picture was there in my palm, like a secret made visible. It felt like a hidden box of magic. That wonder grew into habit: I became the family photographer, bringing my film camera to weddings and wakes, to markets and riverbanks, always trying to capture the fragile, fleeting things I loved.

- Tell us about current projects you have been working on 

Right now, I’m working on a long-term project in my hometown, Bagerhat — at the edge of the Sundarbans. The work explores the impact of rising salinity on women’s bodies and lives. I’ve been documenting how climate change forces women to fish in saltwater for hours every day, how this affects their health, and how their resilience becomes a quiet form of resistance.

Alongside the photographs, I’ve been experimenting with salt prints. I deliberately use excessive salt, knowing it will corrode and blur the images — a metaphor for how lives here are slowly eroded by salt, storm, and time. Last year, when Cyclone Remal struck, half of my prints were washed away by floodwater. That accident became part of the work — a reminder that nature itself is co-creating these images with me.

- Is this story inspired out of personal reasons, or others? 

This story is deeply personal. I grew up in Bagerhat, and I’ve seen how water and salt shape our lives — sometimes as sustenance, sometimes as destruction. The struggles of women in my hometown are not distant to me; they are part of my own story. When I was diagnosed with a uterine tumour, I felt their pain even more closely. Their bodies and mine carry parallel scars. That connection is what drives me to tell this story.

-What are you most excited about in these projects? 

What excites me most is the possibility of bringing these images back to the community they come from. I want the women of Bagerhat to see their own stories reflected with dignity — in exhibitions, in a book, in spaces where their struggles and resilience are honored. For me, the most powerful moment will be when the work returns home.

- How did you find your visual literacy? 

My visual literacy developed through practice and observation. Beginning with a Polaroid in childhood, I learned to translate fleeting moments into lasting images. Years of documenting my community, experimenting with film and alternative processes like salt prints, have taught me to read the world visually — to see not just what is present, but also what is fading, endangered, or overlooked.

-Why are you attracted to certain images more than others? 

I’m drawn to images that carry memory, emotion, and fragility — the moments that feel alive but also fleeting. Often, it’s not just what is in the frame, but what is implied: the absence, the shadow, the quiet gestures.

- Imagine meeting someone who is picking up a camera for the first time. What do you tell them?

Pick up the camera and just start. Look, observe, and trust what draws your attention. Photography is about curiosity, patience, and paying attention.