In the past, many travelers visited Dhaka and their visual accounts are considered as an important tangible evidence of Dhaka’s History. Art works by Sir Charles D’Oyly, Frederick William and George Chinnery, who visited Dhaka around 1st half of the 19th Century, help us to reveal city’s past imagery. Even today, we mesmerize to see the photographs of their etching, paintings and sketches of historical Dhaka. The aim of this article is not to resurface those images again. We rather were keen to learn how present Dhaka is perceived and portrayed by the foreigners who traveled to Dhaka or somehow experienced the city recently.
Our source is obviously the internet. We’ve collected the published illustrations from personal blogs or social accounts, official sites and other online sources. Among the selected illustrations, sketches from Architect & Author Francis D K Ching and Australian Architect David Holm are also presented.
Dhaka_The Traffic Capital
Dhaka often labeled with ‘the traffic capital of the world’ offers to the artist nothing but the image of City’s gridlock traffic perhaps. Illustration by Google Doodler Sophia Foster-Dimino, Painter Christopher Corr (UK), Marlene Nobel Keramiek ( Netherlands) is not an exception but unique in their own style. Sophia’s illustration on Dhaka traffic was first published in New Republic on July 3, 2014.
Dhaka_ City of Rickshaw
In February 2015, after releasing Google street view of Dhaka, a group of Artist published their artworks on Dhaka and Chittagong city on the website called virtual paint out. The site is hosted by – Bill Guffey, (a self-taught artist living in Kentucky) where an artist uses an image found through Google Street View as the reference for the painting or drawing. Most of their artworks framed the informality of Dhaka where Rickshaw was a common subject matter.
Informal Dhaka
The author of ‘Form, Space & Order’ – architect Francis D K Ching visited Dhaka in Jan 2016 to attend the 10th-anniversary program of Architecture Dept, AIUB. He drew two sketches on Dhaka street and later posted them on his blog Seeing.Thinking.Drawing. According to him “I drew this view to record a recurring sight along the streets of Dhaka, the large bundles of cables and wiring that carry electricity and communications to buildings”. While explaining his sketch on Shakhari Bazar lane in Old Dhaka, he also noted “It’s interesting to compare the street views of Taipei with two I drew in Dhaka. In contrast to the relative orderliness of Taipei, we have the ‘informality’ of Dhaka. But as one Bangladeshi told me: “Within the informal, there is the formal.”
Heritage Dhaka
Australian architect David Holm, director of COX architecture and Churchill fellow, visited Dhaka in Sept 2015 for the purpose of a workshop on drawing and recording the public spaces of the city. During his stay in Dhaka, he drew several sketches which he posted on his Twitter account. His free-hand quick sketches nicely framed the public space and architectural heritage of Dhaka.
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