“It’s fine to take great pictures, but martyrs don’t make great photographers,” he said. “Staying safe is one part of the equation. The other is understanding all that happens … There are many ways to tell stories. For me — and this might not apply to all of you — but I am from Bangladesh and my concern is Bangladesh itself. I’m very happy when they publish my pictures. I’m happier still when they pay me for publishing my pictures. But the point is, that is not my primary concern. My primary concern is what is happening to my country, my people. That is where my intervention needs to be.”

More excerpts from that April conversation, edited for space and clarity, are below. As you read them, remember that Shahidul Alam still sits in a cell, the sun blocked by his very government, which recoiled at his shedding light on injustice. Those of us who take for granted the warmth of sunlight — and freedom of expression — should not forget a solitary man a world away.

On what motivated him as a photographer:

I was having a show in Belfast, and I was staying with Irish friends in a small town. They had a 5-year-old named Karina. I love kids and Karina and I were great pals. I’d come back from the show. I emptied my pockets. I had some coins. I was putting them on the table. Usually, when Karina sees me, she runs up to me and jumps in my arms and we tell each other stories. That day she’s at the door staring at me. I said, “What’s the matter, Karina?” She says, “You’ve got money?” I say, “Yes, I’ve got money.” She says, “But you’re from Bangladesh.” She couldn’t make it fit.

She’s a nuclear physicist [today] doing wonderful things, but I remember her as a 5-year-old daughter in a little veranda dancing in the moonlight. It was magical … It got me thinking about the sort of environment, that social, political, cultural environment that a 5-year-old grew up where she was incapable [of] seeing a Bangladeshi as anything other than an icon of poverty. So it got me thinking about what led to it.