Shahidul Alam

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Shahidul Alam was born in 1955 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.^[1] He studied and taught chemistry in London where he obtained a PhD from the University of London.^[2] He started photography in 1980 and was nominated the best photographer of the year by the London Arts Council in 1983. He became the president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society. In 1989 he set up Drik Picture Library and "Pathshala" - South Asian Institute of Photography. He is also a director of Chobi Mela, the festival of photography in Asia.^[3] Jury member of numerous competitions including World Press Photo where he has been a judge on four occasions, he was the first Asian person of colour to chair the international jury in World Press Photo history. Awarded the Andrea Frank Foundation Award and the Howard Chapnick Award in 1998 he has also been awarded the Honorary Fellowships of the Bangladesh Photographic Society and later, the Royal Photographic Society in 2001, for his contribution to photography. He is on the advisory board for the Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and the National Geographic Society. He is visiting professor of Sunderland University in the UK and Regent's Lecturer at UCLA in the USA.

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