HONORABLE MENTION: Mithail Afrige Chowdhury

The Brick Prison

Salma works as a freelance brick bat laborer in Gabtoli, Dhaka, Bangladesh. She must chop up 500 bricks by 5pm each day in order to be paid. Salma’s one-year-old son is too young to understand this deadline and is crying to his mother for milk.

© Mithail Afrige Chowdhury

Submission Statement:

Women have the most diverse roles in the world. They are fighters, mothers, sisters, wives. They sacrifices their life for change: they change life, they change society.

Author Background:

Mithail Afrige Chowdhury (afrige1971@gmail.com) is a documentary and street photographer based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He was raised with ordinary people in his birth town of Khulna, Bangladesh. Since then he has always tried to see and understand people’s lives, their pain, happiness, and the complications wrought from social, economical, political, and environmental changes. While living in the Dhaka in 2015, when he began photography, he decided to capture only the things that he was close to throughout his life. Mithail’s primary objectives are to show people about other people’s problems and emotions and try to effect change through his pictures.

As a photographer, he has documented the Rohingya refugee crisis, the effect of climate change on Bangladesh (ongoing project), major festivals, the river crisis around Dhaka city, street and slum people, slum fires, and the corona virus crisis (ongoing project).

Mithail has won several international photo competitions, such as a Life Press photo award [Ukraine] and Xposure International photo.