Dhaka's jungle of apartments

One of the main components of this building activity is the multifamily building housing activity unit, commonly known as the apartment block, which is spread across the city and is still coming up. One of the reasons for the popularity of this structure is because it is an instrument of profit for three parties-- the property owner, the prospective buyer of the apartments and the developer.

For the profit of a few, the city loses a lot, Kashef points out. One sees the abrupt transformation of the residential areas but without any control and without seeing if there is an adequate infrastructure such as gas and water supply and whether there are their own schools with parking facilities, playgrounds in areas like Dhanmondi.

What Kashef has tried to do is something simple: he has taken coloured photographs of some 748 buildings, taking random buildings into focus. Now it is up to the audience to think about the response to the growth of Dhaka today. Kashef has used 35 plastic one-time cameras, costing $4 to $ 6. They fail to establish any bondage between the instrument and the photographer. He says that there is a similar case between the developer and the building. The developer, he stresses, is like a large dinosaur which lays its eggs and moves on to more eggs and profit. The buildings are not acts of passion or care. The construct of the photographs is as casual as the buildings themselves.

One may ask how is one to experience the exhibition if one cannot enter into the space of the photographs themselves, which were laid out all across the exhibition floor. Kashef's answer is that the exhibition is not something to enjoy but to see and make note of. As citizens we are bystanders and there is little that we can do about it. This is what the city has come to after places have been called after gardens like Shahbagh, Segunbagicha, and Kalabagan. There were also canals like Begunbarikhal and Dholaikhal which were inter linked and carried the waste matter away but now the open spaces are few, says Kashef, apart from the Sangsad Bhaban, Ramna and Suhrawardy Udyan, Botanical Garden in Mirpur, Bahadur Shah Park and Dhanmondi Lake areas. This is another way to say, 'Can we have some change?'