Ismail Ferdous | TEDxMaastricht
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Ismail Ferdous was born in Dhaka, 1989. He is a documentary photographer, mostly covers social humanitarian issues. One of his significant projects is The Cost of Fashion, photo advocacy about the fashion workers of Bangladesh.
His family always dreamt that he would be an accountant or a banker, following the family traditional. But somehow travelling and people’s stories in unreachable communities have always fascinated him.
Eventually which led him to become a photographer. As a child, Ferdous would play with his father’s old Russian camera, memorizing the exposure settings. But it wasn’t until his early twenties, when studying business at East West University, that he became serious about pursuing photography as a profession. He lived more than half of his life in big Dhaka city before he started travelling in different countries in South Asia, Middle East, North and South America. After earning his BBA, he went to a local photo school but quit this after a month and became a freelance photographer. He learned photography by doing it.
Now he is based in Bangladesh and has been working on Climate Change, HIV AIDS and Workers of Garment Industry stories. But recently he started a new story about Violence Against Women in Guatemala. He worked for many different for NGOs, agencies and news organizations like the Showtime, World Bank, Associated Press, SIDA-Global Reporting, and Ocean Conservancy.
He was awarded Alexia Foundation Award of Excellence in 2012, also he won numerous awards like Nation Photo Press Award USA 2014, World Bank Young Artist, WHO award, Commonwealth Gold Award, Save Water, Young Portfolio (Kmopa), InterAction Grand prize and many more. His works were exhibited 25CPW Gallery New York, World Bank Head office, Powerhouse Museum, Rio de Janerio -UNICEF etc. Also His work has appeared in New York Times Op-Docs, New Yorker Magazine, National Geographic- Germany, OmVärlden magazine, Washington Post, Time Magazine Lightbox, New York Times Lens blog, Wall Street Journal, InterAction Magazine, MIPJ journal and more.