Heroes of our time
Nasir Ali Mamun's camera captures the great personalities of the century

NASIR Ali Mamun is a poet with the camera. An energetic and sensitive photographer, Nasir has devoted his time for the past three decades searching for the luminaries of our time through his camera and has been successful in making portraits of the great minds of our time across the globe. From among a formidable number of portraits taken in the last thirty years, Nasir has recently published an album, Legendary Faces, featuring a selection of his brilliant portraits in black and white.

In an emotive preface to the album Nasir has expressed his ideas about portrait photography: "I don't use artificial light to capture the faces I revere. I wait for the natural light to illuminate the faces and then click my camera. Capturing distinguished writers, poets, artists, journalists, movie stars in my camera has been my passion for the last thirty years. It gives me great pain when I think that these personalities who assumes eternal life in photography will one day embark on an eternal journey and embrace death."

Narir also writes in the preface, "camera is for me what a paintbrush is to a painter." The way Nasir treats his subject, controls the play of light and shade on the famous and great faces, the portraits assume the qualities of oil painting and convinces the viewers of Nasir's ability to interpret the personality of the great souls he has encountered over the past three decades.

What is unique about his portrait photography is his intimate approach to his subject. Posing for him never been a very formal thing that is the impression one gets looking at the portraits. It seems as if the sitters are unaware of being photographed.

-Ziaul Karim