If you could turn your deepest fantasy into reality for just an hour, what would it look like? In the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, acclaimed photographer Samsul Alam Helal offers factory workers the chance to do just that. In his “Love Studio,” Helal prepares backdrops, outfits, and props to bring dreams to life, and then photographs the results. In one photo, a man aims a gun dramatically into the distance, wearing nothing but his underwear. In another, there’s just a goat.
Helal says his technicolour photos capture the dreams stifled by unskilled work and poverty. Jurain, the neighbourhood home of Love Studio, is filled with factories that are staffed by workers who arrive from rural areas, with dreams borrowed from the films of Bollywood and Dhallywood [this is homegrown cinema made in Dhaka]. But faced with the monotony of factory work, the desire to see a village goat just one more time is understandable—as is the fantasy of riding away fast on a motorbike.
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We interviewed Helal about the dreams he photographs, from the banal to the violent.
VICE: Hey Helal, let’s start with the area. Can you tell us what life is like in Jurain?
Samsul Alam Helal: Jurain, where I grew up, is basically an old part of Dhaka. Most of the area is industrial, and filled with factories that make garments, cosmetics and silver. For almost 30 years, I saw how people are surviving, how people were working. I used to regularly sit in a small street-corner pharmacy owned by a friend, talking to the people who came in for medicine. One thing I noticed is that a lot of the time people came in with cut hands and wounded legs. They injured themselves on the job. The local pharmacist would sew in some stitches and they would buy super-cheap medicine. Other times, people would come in with a fever or something else but ask for just one tablet. For me, these scenes were painful. People couldn’t even afford medicine.
Who are these people? Are most born outside the city?
Most people migrate to Dhaka from the villages. They come to Dhaka with big dreams. Most of them sold their land, sold their business, everything. They watched films at cinemas and dramas on TV and felt that one day they too might also be a hero or a businessman. A lot of people say that they thought if they came to Dhaka, they would get good jobs and open a successful business and have a beautiful, rich life. But from my observations, that doesn’t happen. Dhaka is like a trap for these people. They can’t even go back to the villages because they sold their land.
What’s the story behind the Love Studio itself?
In the past, there was a culture in Bangladesh where people would go to studios with painted backdrops. That was what traditional studios were known for. But over the past 10-15 years, everything has shifted to digital photography. And those traditional studios, with the backdrops and the decorations, don’t exist anymore. Now they just take a photo against a white wall and do the rest on the computer. I had a good relationship with a studio owner, who was my neighbour, so I told him that I had an idea: I wanted to decorate the studio like a traditional one with all the backdrops and the props. Then I spoke to people on my street, at the medicine shop and in the area and invited them to the studio. I explained that I wanted to make their dreams come true and asked them what they wanted.
Were there any answers that surprised you?
Did you see the image of the guy wearing underwear and holding a gun? There’s a fairly large unemployed population in Dhaka. They want to work but can’t get a job, so they have a lot of pain. They hate the system because they’re not a part of the system. And in Bangladesh, we see a lot of corruption. People see that their businesses aren’t thriving even though they work hard, while other people live comfortable lives because of their connections to the state bureaucracy. This guy wanted to be photographed in a position of power, because in real life he has no power. I said, “the studio is a space to be what you want to be. What would you like to be?” He said he wanted to take a picture with a gun. He said, “I just hate corruption. If I had a gun, I would kill every corrupt person.” That’s one dream which surprised me—how he explained his hate for the system and corruption in the city.
But why did he want to be photographed in just his underwear?
Have you seen Bollywood films? The lead actors go to the gym and work on their bodies. And this guy was tiny. But before the shoot, he told me that sometimes he goes to the gym. I think he wanted to show off his figure with a gun in a cinematic moment, or something like that, like in Bangla cinema.
There’s quite a lot of people holding guns in the photo series. Was violence a common fantasy?
The studio was a space for people to do things they wouldn’t do outside the studio. What people couldn’t do outside, they did in the studio. There’s a photo of a woman riding a motorbike with her boyfriend sitting in the back. In Bangladesh that’s not possible. I took that photograph in 2011 or 2012. Recently girls have begun riding motorbikes but at the time that wasn’t something you saw. In most cases, it’s just men riding motorbikes.
Do women seem as drawn to gun-based imagery as men?
Both men and women are interested in taking photos with guns. I think it’s like what I told you before: something to do with power. Outside, they have no power to do anything. They’re suffering. When they make garments, they’re paid poorly. They live in small rooms without proper electricity and water. They can’t even talk loudly, like rich people can in their homes. So I think when they come to the studio, they want to be photographed with the power they don’t have.
How did visitors to the Love Studio find the experience? Is it joyful to watch them live out their dreams temporarily, or a sad reminder of what they don’t have?
Everyone is really happy and has a good time. Some of them recently found out that the photos have been published online in several places, which makes them really happy, because they were performing their hopes, their desires, and their dreams. During the shoot, some of them say, “we see journalists on the street taking photos, but you’re doing something different.”
Do you know if any visitors to the Love Studio have had their dreams come true in the real world?
Did you see the image of the man in front of a plane? Since then, he’s been to Bahrain! His dream came true!
See more of Samsul Alam Helal’s work here.
