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# Sarker Protick’s 'Dhaka 1217': A City Seen Through Time
- URL: https://serenademagazine.art/sarker-proticks-dhaka-1217-a-city-seen-through-time/
- Published: 2026-09-24T04:00:23.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-24T04:00:22.000Z
- Description: Through 135 photographs made over 15 years, Sarker Protick traces the shifting landscape of Dhaka, exploring how absence, memory and everyday details can reveal the deeper histories embedded within a changing city.
- Author: Nikhil Sardana
- Tags: On View

For 15 years, Sarker Protick has kept returning to the same small part of Dhaka. Within a one-square-mile radius of the neighbourhood where he was born and continues to live, he has photographed streets, buildings, vegetation, people, objects and traces of lives unfolding around him. What began as a series of separate observations has gradually become *Dhaka 1217*, a body of 135 black-and-white photographs that brings together different strands of the artist's life and practice.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/20--The-sky-held-it--the-earth-remembered-at-Ishara-Art-Foundation.jpg)

Installation view of **The sky held it, the earth remembered*, featuring Sarker Protick’s **Dhaka 1217* (2011–2026), Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, 2026\. Photography by Ismail Noor/Seeing Things. Courtesy of Ishara Art Foundation.

A selection from the series is currently on view at Ishara Art Foundation in Dubai as part of *The sky held it, the earth remembered*, presented in collaboration with the Han Nefkens Foundation. The exhibition considers land, water and the cosmos as repositories of memory, exploring how environments retain traces of histories and transformations. But for Protick, *Dhaka 1217* is not simply a response to that idea. It is the result of a much longer and more personal engagement with his immediate surroundings.

## The neighbourhood as a starting point

“From early on in my practice, I was naturally drawn to spaces and people close to me, around my home/neighbourhood,” Protick says.

His first photographic series, *In Midnight Black*, made in 2010, took him into Dhaka after midnight. Soon afterwards, he began photographing his grandparents in an old apartment in the neighbourhood in a series titled *Mr. & Mrs. Das*. Other projects followed. He photographed the Bangladesh film industry, which was also located in the same area, made a series about crows from his mother's window, created a film about his mother and documented a protest to save a public park.

Individually, these projects might appear to belong to different chapters of his practice. Looking back, Protick sees them as connected.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/062.-Walid-Saddam--168-Days----sit-in-protest----at-Panthakunja-Park.-Bangladesh-Tree-Protection-Movement.JPG)

Walid Saddam, 168-day sit-in protest at Panthakunja Park, Bangladesh Tree Protection Movement, from the series **Dhaka 1217* (2011–2026). Courtesy of the artist.

“These all formed a constellation of works, entangled with each other,” he says. “Some are resolved, some are not yet. I think this book, *Dhaka 1217*, connects those dots.”

The idea of a constellation is an apt way of understanding the project. There is no single subject that governs the photographs. Instead, they accumulate around a place and a life, with one image leading to another through memory, association or proximity.

## Learning to photograph what is missing

The exhibition's curatorial premise places particular emphasis on what is absent from Protick's images. The built environment encroaches upon parks, lakes and vegetation; infrastructure gradually alters the spaces around it. But absence is not something the photographer treats as straightforwardly visible.

“Absence as an element is intriguing,” Protick says. “But in photography, absence can be quite challenging, because a photograph by default, reveals.”

For him, photography can too easily explain an image rather than leave room for the viewer to construct meaning. “Photography often has this tendency to explain, sometimes too much,” he says.

His alternative is to suggest rather than disclose completely.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/129.-Sayed-Muhammad-Zakir---s-installation-in-Panthakunja-Park.JPG)

Sayed Muhammad Zakir’s installation in Panthakunja Park, from the series **Dhaka 1217* (2011–2026). Courtesy of the artist.

“An interesting position to take is to figure out a way not to reveal, yet still hint at something,” he explains. “Then the feeling grows stronger, because then we use our cognitive ability, our imagination, and bring our own personal history to create meaning out of it.”

This becomes particularly apparent in *Dhaka 1217*. A photograph does not always tell us exactly what has been lost or what existed before. Instead, the traces invite speculation. A piece of vegetation behind construction, an old photograph, a domestic object or an altered landscape can become a point of entry into histories that are only partially visible.

## Letting the work grow organically

The photographs were not initially made with a predetermined structure in mind. Protick describes the early years of the project as deliberately open-ended.

“In the early years of photography, I did not want to have anything that was too rigid, but rather wanted to see what grows organically,” he says.

Over time, however, recurring subjects and connections began to emerge. It was while editing the work for the book that he understood more clearly what the photographs had been building towards.

“Pages next to each other started to create meaning,” he says. “Going from the start to the end created an arc, and within that arc there were many chapters.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/002.-Girls-after-School--Diluroad.JPG)

Girls after School, Diluroad, from the series **Dhaka 1217* (2011–2026). Courtesy of the artist.

Protick compares the editing process to writing a song. “You eventually understand which notes are working and which aren't, or aren't needed, in a given scale,” he says. “You start to recognise what you respond to most, what matters most, and you try to find a way to weave those things together.”

The result is a body of work in which apparently disparate subjects can sit beside one another. Fallen hair on a floor, a woman looking out from an old photograph in a stained envelope, a stack of books gathering dust, construction, vegetation and images of public demonstrations all become part of the same visual narrative.

“It almost felt like a coming of age story,” Protick says. “And all those subjects felt vital to speak about.”

## A city changing around its inhabitants

There is also a larger story unfolding through these intimate observations. *Dhaka 1217* registers the physical transformation of the city, particularly the pressure of construction and infrastructure on the natural environment.

A railway line under development almost obscures foliage in the distance. Palm trees stand behind construction hoardings, buffeted by rain. Elsewhere, the relationship between built and natural environments becomes less a dramatic confrontation than a gradual process of encroachment.

Protick is direct about his concerns. “I think the idea of development in Dhaka, or in Bangladesh in general, shows a complete disregard for ecological concern and care,” he says. In his view, what previous regimes presented as development came at the cost of the natural environment, which he describes as having been destroyed at times with extreme violence.

Yet the photographs do not function simply as documentation of environmental loss. Their attention remains dispersed between the ecological, social and personal.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/035.-Birds-of-Prey-I.JPG)

Birds of Prey I, from the series **Dhaka 1217* (2011–2026). Courtesy of the artist.

That approach is connected to Protick's wider practice. His long-term series *Of River and Lost Lands*, which he has been working on since 2011, brought him into close contact with the ecology of the Padma River.

“It enabled me to look closely at the ecology of the river Padma, something fundamental to our land,” he says, “how it has affected our lives, and how we have affected it over the years.”

That project opened up further lines of enquiry, taking him into the history of Bengal and its industrial past. It also led him to consider historical interventions dating back to the colonial era, subjects he says he had previously paid little attention to.

In this sense, landscape has become a way into history for Protick. The environment is not simply a backdrop against which history takes place. Changes to land, rivers and cities become evidence of the decisions, systems and lives that have shaped them.

## Looking, teaching and curating

Protick's relationship with photography has also been shaped by his work beyond his own image-making. Since 2017, he has been a resident curator of Chobi Mela, and in 2024 he co-curated Colomboscope. He has also taught at Pathshala South Asian Media Institute for more than a decade.

These roles have created an exchange between looking at his own work and looking at the work of others.

“There's a lot of exchange possible between these roles, especially curating and teaching,” he says. “In both, I am dealing with work that isn't mine but someone else's, which automatically brings new perspectives.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/087.-Amma_s-Sewing-Machine.JPG)

Amma’s Sewing Machine, from the series **Dhaka 1217* (2011–2026). Courtesy of the artist.

Curating has influenced the way he constructs exhibitions of his own work, but Protick also recognises the need to maintain a distinction between external perspectives and his own artistic language.

“But in the end, when you're making your own work, you have to find a way that's truly yours, aligned with your personal interests and way of living, in a language that comes naturally to you,” he says.

That emphasis on the personal is particularly revealing in relation to *Dhaka 1217*. The project may speak to larger questions of urbanisation, ecology and history, but its starting point is not an abstract concern. It is home.

## From the familiar to the historical

The longer Protick has photographed his neighbourhood, the more history seems to have accumulated within it. The photographs do not attempt to provide a complete account of Dhaka. Instead, they allow fragments to remain fragments.

This is perhaps where the series most closely connects with the premise of *The sky held it, the earth remembered*. The exhibition brings together practices that consider environments as carriers of memory. Protick approaches that idea not through spectacular landscapes but through repeated attention to an ordinary, familiar patch of the city.

His photographs suggest that a city can be read through what is gradually altered, displaced or obscured. They also show how personal history becomes inseparable from the physical places in which it unfolds.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/04/9f/049f21fc-2d04-422c-9e33-73935ebdb811/content/images/2026/09/114.-Monsoon-Uprising--Karwan-Bazar--July-36--2024.JPG)

Monsoon Uprising, Karwan Bazar, July 36, 2024, from the series **Dhaka 1217* (2011–2026). Courtesy of the artist.

For Protick, *Dhaka 1217* has ultimately been about recognising connections that were already there.

“I think this book, *Dhaka 1217*, connects those dots.”

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Sarker Protick’s *Dhaka 1217* is on view as part of *The sky held it, the earth remembered* at Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, through 15 December 2026.