Portfolio: Laila Nahar

Artist's Statement

Laila is primarily a self-taught photographer and book-artist exploring belonging, memory, cultural and collective identity. Her background from Bangladesh continues to shape her artistic identity and her work goes back to her roots in the Indian subcontinent, namely Bangladesh and India. Laila’s photographs range from a documentary style capture of a passing moment, blurry or stark landscapes, environmental portraits, color fragments, archival documents/slides and prints, collage of people from different times and mundane places evoking memories and emotions from the past. She tries to focus on poetic quality in her photographs using metaphors for the complex feelings. As she goes through her journey of self-exploration through photography, Laila has taken the unique path of handmade photo artist books as her artistic expression and identity. For her, the subject is very personal, and the book becomes an attempt to make her experiences tangible with the use of photos, images, ephemera and format. For Laila, the photography and handmade artist book are reminiscent of the melody from Bangladesh.

In Laila’s own words:

The moment is not now
It is not of past, nor is it of future
The moment that runs through the eternity
When life is stripped naked
There is no difference between the stories of “what it could have been” and “what it can be”
The endless possibilities that lead to the frame of image that I see through my lenses
The image that would disperse into endless frames of life
It is that fleeting moment that I long to capture
From which the past and future folds into one
That flash of image that floods the mind with clarity of being
Of being here
Being here before, now and in moments to come
It is not the pages of my book
It is what lies in between the pages
The cover that is the transition, not the beginning, nor the end
It is not A story
It is a story of Everything

Learn More

Laila’s Profile
1:1 with Laila