Drawing from the complex mix of cultural myths and harsh societal expectations, the family does not appear as a natural, harmonious unit but rather as a battlefield of fixed roles and broken ideals. The idea of the “perfect family” is an illusion, a shared fantasy maintained by traditions that demand obedience to patriarchal lineage, professional success, and the sacrifice of personal freedom to inherited rules.
Returning to such a family, as I did in 2020, means facing the ruins of these illusions: a mother’s deep desire for a son shaped like a family legacy, a father who withdraws into silent disappointment, and a brother who fades away after his expected path falls apart. Each person, alone, becomes both a victim and a supporter of a system that ties worth to achievement and love to compliance. In this context, photography is not about nostalgia but about careful investigation-a way to frame the dissonance between what we are conditioned to desire and what remains when those desires crumble.
The camera, both a witness and a tool that can distort, reveals the cracks: the mother’s hardened, resigned look, the father’s absence turned into a ritual, the brother’s identity reduced to a diagnosis. Yet, within this documentation, there is a strange tenderness—an understanding that loving under such dysfunction means accepting both the ugly and the beautiful sides equally. Family, like a photograph, is a choice—what to leave out, what to highlight, what to hide.
My love, imperfect and persistent, does not try to fix or blame but to capture the raw truth of our shared failure. Seen this way, the family portrait becomes proof of survival through collapse, a refusal to let social myths control who belongs. To photograph family is to take back control from the pressure of “should,” and to show that family, no matter how broken, continues not despite its flaws but because of them.
Families, like photos, are made things. But even in their broken edges, light finds a way in.
Returning to such a family, as I did in 2020, means facing the ruins of these illusions: a mother’s deep desire for a son shaped like a family legacy, a father who withdraws into silent disappointment, and a brother who fades away after his expected path falls apart. Each person, alone, becomes both a victim and a supporter of a system that ties worth to achievement and love to compliance. In this context, photography is not about nostalgia but about careful investigation-a way to frame the dissonance between what we are conditioned to desire and what remains when those desires crumble.
The camera, both a witness and a tool that can distort, reveals the cracks: the mother’s hardened, resigned look, the father’s absence turned into a ritual, the brother’s identity reduced to a diagnosis. Yet, within this documentation, there is a strange tenderness—an understanding that loving under such dysfunction means accepting both the ugly and the beautiful sides equally. Family, like a photograph, is a choice—what to leave out, what to highlight, what to hide.
My love, imperfect and persistent, does not try to fix or blame but to capture the raw truth of our shared failure. Seen this way, the family portrait becomes proof of survival through collapse, a refusal to let social myths control who belongs. To photograph family is to take back control from the pressure of “should,” and to show that family, no matter how broken, continues not despite its flaws but because of them.
Families, like photos, are made things. But even in their broken edges, light finds a way in.
' A Perfect Family'
Group Exhibition - Drik Gallery, Dhaka (25th April - 5th May 2025)
Group Exhibition - Drik Gallery, Dhaka (25th April - 5th May 2025)