A moving photographic exhibition charts a struggle to improve the lives of orphaned children in Bangladesh
Experienced photojournalist Ian Spratt first visited the run-down Sreepur orphanage in the back streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1985. The impact of seeing so many abandoned and malnourished children had, he says, a “profound effect” on him. In particular Amina, an inquisitive little girl with luxuriant black hair and a cheeky smile, who would appear repeatedly in Ian’s pictures even when not wanted, made an unforgettable impression. As his coach pulled away from the orphanage on the final day of this first trip, Ian recalls looking back at Amina’s tear streaked face and being moved by how much she reminded him of his own two young daughters.
Unable to shake off the memories of what he had seen, he returned to the orphanage one year later in 1986. Amina was one of the first to run and greet him. This time, her glossy hair was gone – her head had been shaved due to a series of infections and a huge boil on her chin brought tears to his eyes. Resolving to confront the world with what he had seen, Ian set about documenting the dire living conditions of “those fragile, innocent scraps of humanity”. He called this first collection, ‘How Lucky We Are’.
In 1996 and again in 2010, he returned to Bangladesh and set about tracing the children he had photographed on the previous visits. It is a selection of these images, organised in triptychs (one photograph for each of his three visits), which feature in a new exhibition at the Royal Commonwealth Society. Black and white and printed on archival fine art paper, they resonate with a melancholic beauty.
Today Amina is 32, happily married and living in central Dhaka. She has a four year- old son and teaches music, while her husband Shajahan works for an NGO. Her life, Ian says, stands as an enduring testament to the courage and compassion of those working in ‘Sreepur Village’, as the orphanage came to be known.
For more than 25 years, Sreepur’s workers have struggled to improve the lives of abandoned children and destitute and abused women. Ian’s photographs are one small part of this struggle. When, in the face of other’s sacrifices, he has sometimes doubted their worth, he recalls words quoted to him by one the founding members of the Village, “No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”
