The Drik Picture Library: images for change
Abstract
R E V I E W The Drik Picture Library: images for change L O T T E H O E K University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Recent media images of the flooding in Bangladesh demonstrate the continued need for the work carried out by the Drik Picture Library. Set up in 1989, this Bangladeshi media company and centre of activism vigorously battles the media hegemony of the west and its proclivity to depict exotic others in stereotyped and demeaning ways. Rather than pictures of emaciated people packed together in emergency shelter awaiting the relief foods handed out by white United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) representatives, the flood images produced by Drik have shown the reconstruction work after the floods (Figure 1), children playing and the cooking of daily meals despite the water. Focusing on more positive elements and allowing their subjects to tell their own story of perseverance is crucial to the visual strategies of the photographers at Drik. It is part of their battle, a way of intervening in the visual stories held by the west about the inadequate and incapable rest of the world. In her latest book, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Susan