Image: Shahidul Alam (b. 1955, Dhaka, Bangladesh); Sailboat Fishing for Ilish; Daulatdia, Bangladesh; 2001; photograph; courtesy of Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Asia Society Texas Center (ASTC) proudly presents Shahidul Alam: Truth to Power, the first comprehensive U.S. museum survey of Shahidul Alam, the renowned Bangladeshi photographer, writer, activist, and institution builder and a Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2018. Through 60+ images and ephemera, the exhibition will show the breadth of Alam’s practice and impact throughout his four-decade career. The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 13, 2021 and runs through Sunday, July 11, 2021 and admission is free.

The exhibition includes portraits, landscapes, and scenes of daily life, strife, and resistance in the "majority world" — a phrase Alam has used since the 1990s to reframe the notion of the "third world" or "global south." The term also confronts the ways in which Western media continues to define how the majority of the world's population — especially Bangladesh — is portrayed in relation to poverty and disaster.

This pioneering exhibition aims to provide visitors with a nuanced view of Bangladesh and South Asia, to explore systems of personal and collective agency, and to underscore the importance of self-representation, empowerment, and truth as embodied in Alam's life and work.

"My introduction into photography was for political reasons,” states Alam. “It was social justice I was after and I recognized that photography was this powerful tool. And if I was going to fight, I would use the most powerful tools available. I took on photography but I'm not married to the medium. It's social justice I'm after and I will use whatever tool that works at any particular time.”