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Passion and persecution: Bangladesh's outcasts. Before he began photographing the LGBT community in his native Bangladesh towards the end of 2008, Gazi Nafis Ahmed spent a year in their midst without taking a single shot. “I was content just to hang around and socialise”,” he says. “Though my work is ooted in traditional documentary, I cannot photograph people I cannot be friends with. So it is important for me to first create a space for us to be comfortable. The work flows from that”. The result is Inner Face, an insider view of a community that is relatively invisible in Bangladesh’s conservative, patriarchal society. In series of black and white photographs, Ahmed eschews documentary detachment, favouring a more intimate – often playful – kind of collaboration. “I want my subjects to express themselves freely”, he says, “and that involves a huge level of trust on their part”. (Photo by Gazi Nafis Ahmed)
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