Photo Adda revisits the stories behind Munir Uz Zaman’s iconic images

By its fourth session, Photo Adda had already established itself as a serious meeting ground for Bangladesh’s photography community, with its earlier seasons featuring Shankor Sawjal, Sharif Sarker, and Rahul Talukder. On June 26, that growing forum returned to Auditorium Nouvelle Vague at Alliance Française de Dhaka in Dhanmondi, with Munir Uz Zaman as its featured speaker. The two-hour session, held from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm, drew a capacity audience of photojournalists, senior practitioners, students, and photography enthusiasts. Conducted primarily in Bangla, with occasional English, the evening offered more than a career retrospective. It opened a rare public conversation on news photography as lived experience, professional testimony, and historical record. The session was moderated by acclaimed photographer and mentor Abir Abdullah and formed part of the Photo Adda series, a platform for Bangladesh’s photography community. This edition centred on Munir Uz Zaman, one of the country’s most internationally published photojournalists and a long-serving photographer with Agence France-Presse. Over more than two decades, Munir has covered political upheaval, humanitarian emergencies, disasters, social change, and major sporting events across South Asia and beyond. A Pathshala graduate, he also teaches photojournalism at Counter Foto in Dhaka.