Copyright © Laila Nahar
Laila Nahar is a lens-based artist and book-maker in California, USA. She has lived her life in stark cultural contrast, born and brought up in Bangladesh and eventually migrating to the USA. She is primarily a self-taught photographer and book artist exploring belonging, memory, and cultural and collective identity. Her Bangladeshi background continues to shape her artistic identity, and her work goes back to her roots in Bangladesh and India.
Nahar has attended workshops with Elizabeth Avedon, Void Impromptu (Publisher), Melanie McWhorter, Yumi Goto, CBA in NYC, and Susan Kae Grant. She attended CODEX 2024 with seven of her handmade Artist photobooks this year. Will you come to Rome with me? photobook was selected for the DUMMY AWARD 24 shortlist. I Have Been Here Before photobook was shortlisted in the Independent Category Lucie Photo Book Prize 2022, featured in PhotoBook Journal and selected for the 12th Annual Self-Published PhotoBook Show (2022) at Griffin Museum of Photography. Unfolding: Color of Life – Old Delhi photobook was selected for the 13th Annual Self-Published PhotoBook Show at Griffin Museum of Photography (2023); selected as one of best photobooks in 2022 by women / non-binary on TheLuupe.com and honorable mention in Back on the Shelf by FilterPhoto in exhibition (2023).
Nahar’s handmade artist photobooks are in the permanent collections of several libraries and museums, including University of Colorado Boulder Libraries, Rhode Island School of Design, University of Richmond (Virginia), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), amongst others.
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20 November
