Sarker Protick’s preoccupation with the waterways of the Padma River – which branches from the Ganges across India’s border and continues through Bangladesh – has spanned his career. Created over 13 years, Protick’s ‘ , Of River and Lost Lands’ series 2011–ongoing chronicles a web of narratives across time and place to reveal what he describes as a ‘relationship of intimacy and ruthlessness between nature and humans on the margins’.

Damming from across the border with India, together with periodic flooding and the impacts of industrial facilities, have had devastating effects on the Padma River, resulting in decades of widespread erosion, broader environmental changes and large numbers of ecological refugees. ‘ , Of River and Lost Lands’ captures the incongruous river system and reveals the human presence playing quiet witness in the background. The series is split across several groups of images that ruminate on different energies and aspects of the changing river environments, with the disappearance of landscape and life along the vast river system a continuing theme. In the artist’s words, his photographs exist ‘as the last remnants of these vanished and vanishing lands. Most places seen in these photographs have ceased to exist.’