Rooted in Water Lilies

Growing up as a girl from a village of wetlands and water lilies, it was almost instinctive for me to carry within myself the imagery of Hajar Bachhor Dhore—“Tumi shutoy bedhechho shaplar phool” (“You have strung water lilies on a thread”).

My approach to modelling has rarely been about posing for the camera alone. Its inspirations often come from the books I read, the films I watch, and the imagined worlds that emerge from the life I live.

These photographs were taken during the COVID-19 lockdown, when university life had come to a sudden pause and I found myself back in my village. Surrounded once again by the landscape I had grown up with, I tried to turn something deeply familiar—the water lilies, the wetlands, and the quiet rhythms of rural life—into a visual narrative.