SALZBURG.- With Sarker Protick, FOTOHOF is presenting a contemporary artist from Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose long-term investigations combine the media of photography, video and sound in order to create an ongoing meditation on a single moment's transience as well as on larger historical and political formations. In seemingly melancholic images, he makes his way through Dhaka, through the neighborhood where he grew up and still lives today. Looking at the people, animals and plants, which are all to be found in front of a monumental setting of giant construction sites, the aesthetic sentiment fades and reveals itself as a means of interweaving multiple layers of time. As such, the unfinished pieces of concrete and steel seem like frozen relics of an era when mega- cities of the global South were rushing towards a future whose deafening sound still seems to resonate through the images. It is against this backdrop that Sarker Protick creates a personal narrative, an epic vision dedicated to life between the disruptions of capitalist and post-colonialist processes.

Sarker Protick (*1986) is an artist, lecturer and curator. He studied at the South Asian Media Institute – Pathshala in Dhaka, where he has now been teaching for 12 years. Sarker Protick is also co-curator of Chobi Mela International Photography Festival, the longest running photography festival in Asia. He has received numerous grants and awards for his work (including the After Nature Prize 2024, awarded by C/O Berlin and Crespo Foundation, Foam Talent Amsterdam 2021, Magnum Foundation Fund 2018). Sarker Protick lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Exhibition in cooperation with »Internationale Sommerakademie für Bildende Kunst Salzburg«

The German photographic artist Valentina Seidel, who has been associated with Salzburg and FOTOHOF for many years, reviewed and re-edited her contact sheets and slides from the years 1992–94 together with the FOTOHOF>ARCHIV. Since 1975, Salzburg College has been a prominent place of engagement with contemporary photography, and from 1976 onwards, a photography class existed at the Summer Academy of Fine Arts. Seidel studied there in the photography classes of Michael Schmidt and Nan Goldin, and later at Salzburg College under the artistic direction of Verena von Gagern. »Learning from Salzburg« presents the outcomes of these educational opportunities: a slide projection offering insight into artistic processes from Nan Goldin's class, an original series of self-portraits exhibited as a final project in Michael Schmidt's class, as well as works from workshops at Salzburg College under Gérald Minkoff and Günther Selichar. In addition, texts and quotes from participants of that shared time at the Summer Academy and Salzburg College are embedded in the presentation.