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Photographer Shahidul withdraws from Israel show

TBP Desk
16 Jun 2021 10:01:34 | Update: 16 Jun 2021 10:12:08
Photographer Shahidul withdraws from Israel show

Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Alam and South African photographer Gideon Mendel have withdrawn their work and participation in the Eretz Israel Museum showing of Prix Pictet’S touring exhibition ‘Hope’.

Their withdrawal is in solidarity with the Palestinian people and informed by the BDS movement resisting the Israeli government’s settler-occupation and apartheid policies.

The announcement was made in an update Tuesday on Shahidul's website.

The exhibition is due to open at Tel Aviv's Eretz Israel Museum on June 30, 2021.

Shahidul was one of the finalists in the 2019 contest with his work Still She Smiles, which was launched at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. meanwhile, Mendel has twice been nominated for the Prix Pictet, in 2015 with his Drowning World project and in 2019 with his series Damage: A Testament of Faded memory.

Shahidul Alam is also a globally recognised journalist and the only Bangladeshi to have been featured as a Time Magazine Person of the Year (2018). Citing his reasons for withdrawal, he said, "I am Bangladeshi. In 1971, we lived under occupation in East Pakistan. Members of my family died resisting the occupation, as did friends. The Pakistan army’s denial of the genocide of our people relied on cultural events to demonstrate ‘normality’. The boycott of Pakistan, and the global support for our armed struggle, gave us hope and led to our independence."

"My work in this exhibition is about a woman, Hazera Beagum, who provides hope for children who would otherwise have little to hope for. Many children were killed during the recent Israeli aggression. Many more have died over the years since Naqba. Israeli children have died too. With hope dying for the Palestinian children who have survived, my participation would be an insult to those under the brutal Israeli apartheid regime and to those campaigning for their freedom. It would be a betrayal not only of Palestinian aspirations for freedom but the human longing for freedom and independence everywhere."

Mendel is known for his intimate style of image-making and long-term commitment to engaging with the key social issues facing his generation, most notably HIV/AIDS and the ongoing global climate emergency.

He said, "I witnessed the South African state’s brutal response to this protest and was personally struck by the effectiveness of the cultural, sport and economic boycott as a non-violent protest tool that helped bring about the end of apartheid. I’ve never forgotten that, as this struggle unfolded, Israel was one of the few countries on which the Pretoria regime could rely for support and collaboration — particularly in the military field, where Israel defied the international arms embargo to help equip the apartheid security forces with the weapons they brandished against those seeking freedom and justice in South Africa."

"So, as both a South African with this generational history and as a Jewish photographer currently developing a body of work exploring the impacts of the Holocaust on my family, I cannot ignore what is at stake. At this inflamed moment, so soon after the horrifying, asymmetric casualties and damage inflicted on Gaza, where a population comprised mostly of Palestinian refugees from Israel’s creation remains under long term Israeli blockade that has made civilian life barely tolerable, I am struck by the irony of being part of a show entitled Hope," he added.

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