Ismail Ferdous - New York - National Geographic

Foreign Correspondence

The Feel Good Episode of the Year! Bangladeshi photographer Ismail Ferdous (IG: ismailferdous) went from borrowing money to pay for a camera to his first paid project being published in the New Yorker. He lays out his philosophy of seeking the work that speaks to him and working on personal projects without thinking of where it will be published. Now a freelancer in New York City, he’s been published in a slew of big name publications and regularly works for National Geographic. We also discuss his experience with catching COVID-19.

Countries featured: Bangladesh, Syria, Turkey, United States

Publications featured: National Geographic, New Yorker, AP, New York Times, Instagram

Ismail discusses photographing the George Floyd BLM protests (4:34), his experience falling sick with COVID-19 (8:25), growing up in Bangladesh and discovering photography (16:16), his family’s eventual acceptance of his job as a photographer (26:04), his work on the deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza sweatshop (31:26), stories that never came together on HIV patients in Bangladesh and Syrian refugees (48:07), the rigorous process that is doing a story for NatGeo (54:10) and the lightning round (1:05:35).

Here are links to some of the things we talked about:

Ismail’s work on climate change for New Yorker - https://bit.ly/2WY7ZSx

Ismail’s documentary The Deadly Cost of Fashion in New York Times - https://nyti.ms/2CONlxd

After Rana Plaza on Instagram - https://bit.ly/2WX4UCf

After Rana Plaza website - https://bit.ly/39uMQ7K

His NatGeo story on South Asian Americans - https://on.natgeo.com/3hALfjj

NPR podcast Rough Translation - https://n.pr/2ZXvzRo

John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing - https://amzn.to/2CE7xSI

Satyajit Ray wiki bio - https://bit.ly/2WTFi9u

The Opiod Diaries in Time magazine - https://bit.ly/2BAJ2VW

The documentary War Photographer - https://bit.ly/2D1nXEl

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Music: LoveChances (makaihbeats.net) by Makaih Beats

From: freemusicarchive.org

CC BY NC