Photo journalist and writer MA Taher has already nine books to his credit. Each of his publication is different in theme, subject and presentation. However what is unique in all of his books is their visual treatment. Fact of the matter is: Taher’s books are pictorial in nature, however they do tell story through images and the amount of words penned by Taher are also not insignificant either.  Visually stunning images coupled with significant information always make Taher’s book a collector’s dream. In his latest endeavour, his tenth book to be precise, Taher has chosen Boats of Bangladesh as his subject. So does it live up to the expectation? Let’s analyse:

Taher is into photography for more than three decades. Due to his professional purposes, he had to go far flung places and that paved the way for him to capture thousands of boats which are different in size, colour and shape. It’s indeed a daunting task to remember all the names of his captured boats as we do not have any authentic research based book on boats of Bangladesh. But Taher took this great challenge and was helped by recently demised painter Qayyum Chowdhury and historian Muntasir Mamoon. As you flip the pages of the book, you could understand how compelling it was for Taher to gather names of these boats in the caption. Even more compelling was perhaps to capture and preserve the photographs of these stunning boasts, most of which are extinct from the country now. The 1988 and 1998 devastating floods and how people of Dhaka travelled on those days with the help of boasts were also captured and presented beautifully. Qayyum Chowdhury in his preface rightly said, ‘To look at Taher’s pictures for me is another river journey. The boat at the bank of the market, the launch ghat on broken shore, rowing the boat with a bamboo stick, visiting the parental homes by the daughters, music by bridal party on the boat, floating boats made of big chunks of logs, fishing nets, the fisherman with net in one hand and oar in another — all these pictures of Taher make me nostalgic.’ 

This 171 pages book is printed in all colour art paper and priced at Tk 1500. Considering the price, it may sound a bit expensive, however if you grab a copy and go through every pages of the book, this reviewer feels you might buy one for yourself because holding this book would give you a piece of Bangladesh. It would take you to a nostalgic journey to your roots where you had a long association with boats as a medium of communication. Our new generation does deserve to know these untold stories and MA Taher’s book contains exactly that and more. Published by NRB Scholars Publishers with a magnificent cover illustration by art maestro Qayyum Chowdhury, ‘Boats of Bangladesh’ is perhaps the best pictorial book by MA Taher till date.

(The writer is a freelance journalist now based in USA and can be reached at n.saquib@yahoo.com)