Faces of the City — a research based project and exhibition by visual artist Rakib Ahmed — will kick off on 27 January at Britto Space — a contemporary art hub in Dhaka.

Curated by Joyanta Howlader, the exhibition will be inaugurated at 6:00pm on Friday.

Faces of the city

‘Panoly Photographers Studio’ was founded by Haji Md. Delowar Hossain in 1981, who started a venture in photography at his family building in Dhanmondi Road 27 in Dhaka.

The studio was alive until March 2016; after that the old building was demolished for new construction. Joyanta Howlader, the curator of the project ‘Faces of the City’ along with Rakib Ahmed, a visual artist, have discovered the studio stock material during their last exhibition, ‘D27’— a multi-dimensional art exhibition — prior to the demolition of the building. From the studio store, they recovered old equipment and thousands of well-preserved medium formatted positives.

‘Faces of the city’ is like an archaeological finding of photography practice in the studios during the last quarter of the previous century. The studio containing thousands of medium formatted negatives give a different reality within our reality.  The project will be displaying nameless faces with numbers, time, space, fashion, lifestyle of 1980s Dhaka city as a time capsule that reveals itself to the viewers after some decades.

The exhibition will be open to all from 3:00-8:00pm, until 7 February.