A groundbreaking photography exhibition is offering an intimate glimpse into the life of S.M. Sultan, one of Bangladesh's most celebrated artists, through the lens of renowned photographer Nasir Ali Mamun. The exhibition, titled "Shotoborshe Sultan," marks the birth centenary of the legendary painter who transformed how the world sees rural Bangladesh and its people.
Organized by Bengal Foundation in collaboration with HSBC Bangladesh, the special exhibition opened on Friday, August 22, 2025, at 6:00 PM at the Quamrul Hassan Exhibition Hall, Bengal Shilpalay in Dhaka. The show runs daily except Sundays from 4:00 to 8:00 PM until September 27, 2025. The exhibition features rare black-and-white portraits of S.M. Sultan by Mamun, along with original negatives, handwritten letters, and personal memorabilia, many displayed publicly for the first time.
The collection offers a visual journey from Sultan's humble village home in Narail to his later years as an established artist. A commemorative catalog titled "Seeding the Soul" was also launched during the opening ceremony, providing additional context and documentation of the artist's remarkable life and work.
S.M. Sultan (1924-1994) revolutionized Bangladeshi art by depicting peasants and rural workers with monumental scale and dignity. His paintings transformed the agrarian body from colonial ornament into powerful symbols of survival and strength. Sultan's canvases presented what art critics call "counter-histories" – giving peasants heroic proportions and showing their muscles as bearing "the sediment of centuries." His work positioned rural laborers not as picturesque subjects but as the true measure of Bangladesh itself.
Mamun's photographic approach mirrors Sultan's artistic philosophy by refusing to elevate the painter into an abstract celebrity figure. Instead, the photographs embed Sultan within the same austere, everyday world he celebrated in his paintings. The images show him sitting on a mat in a deteriorating zamindar's house, painting in natural light spilling through an open door, sharing meals with cats as companions, and working by the dim glow of a hurricane lamp.
The exhibition reveals Sultan's life through carefully composed scenes that avoid voyeuristic intrusion while maintaining dignity and authenticity. Mamun's lens captures the artist in fragile light and humble spaces, showing him within the rhythms of ordinary survival rather than artistic glamour. These photographs serve as what writer Naseef Faruque Amin describes as "counter-archives" – documenting not the triumphant story of leaders but the quiet narrative of endurance.
Particularly striking are two photographs set in a rural bazaar, where Sultan appears in traditional dress among villagers and merchants. These images create what resembles living tableaux, with Sultan's presence naturally integrated into the everyday commerce of rural life. The composition shows him as both ordinary villager and magnetic figure, demonstrating how his world was never separate from the people he painted.
The interplay of light and shadow throughout Mamun's portraits creates an atmosphere of mystery and authenticity. Light enters not as theatrical spectacle but as natural intrusion – filtering through doors, across floor mats, beside flickering lamps. The shadows that gather in corners suggest that Sultan himself resisted being fully understood or explained, preferring to remain partially hidden while his art spoke for itself.
One particularly moving photograph shows Sultan surrounded by children as he sketches, their small bodies leaning toward his drawing in fascination. This image echoes the monumental bodies he painted on canvas, creating a visual continuum between his art and his life. Another captures him sharing mealtime with cats, revealing a man who lived without hierarchical boundaries between human and animal, embodying what critics call a "subaltern ethic" of shared survival.
The exhibition challenges conventional artistic biography by presenting Sultan not as an untouchable genius but as what could be called a "peasant of art" – someone who tilled images the way others till soil. The photographs insist that the artist's life belonged to the same subaltern vision he rendered in paint, from the cracked floors beneath his feet to the hurricane lamp that served as both light source and artistic inspiration.
Mamun's documentation represents more than mere portraiture; it creates a parallel historiography of Bangladesh that emphasizes endurance over power, artists over politicians, and hands over institutions. The photographs resist the erasure that often befalls artists after their deaths, ensuring that Sultan remains present not just as myth but as a living memory of dedication and artistic integrity.
The exhibition ultimately demonstrates how portraits of artists function as landscapes of history, shaped by political turbulence, survival, and collective memory. Through Mamun's lens, Sultan's individual story becomes inseparable from Bangladesh's national narrative, showing how one man's solitude connects to collective endurance and how his artistic vision emerged from the same soil he celebrated in his paintings.
