Kurigram: Labour and Life

Kurigram is my hometown, a northern district of Bangladesh where life is deeply tied to work. Growing up here, I saw how labour shaped everything: the rhythm of days, the pace of the seasons, the sound of metal and earth. When I began photographing in 2024, I wanted to look again at these familiar scenes, not as passing realities but as moments that carry the quiet dignity of survival.

This series follows the people whose hands sustain Kurigram, from the welders and brick breakers building the Mawlana Bhashani Bridge to the farmers, herders, and drivers who move through the surrounding land. The bridge became a symbol for me, a structure linking progress with the persistence of ordinary life. The photographs trace that connection, beginning with the bridge under construction and ending with a farmer walking home beneath it, now complete.

I photographed these moments as they happened, without staging or intrusion. I was drawn to gestures that feel both fleeting and timeless: the arc of a hand, the glow of sparks, the stillness after a long day’s work. Together, these images form a quiet portrait of a place in transition, caught between change and continuity.

Through this project, I am also tracing my own relationship to home. Kurigram is where I first understood light, distance, and endurance. Returning here with a camera has allowed me to see how labour, like memory, builds slowly, brick by brick and hand by hand, into the shape of belonging.