Plabon’s journey: History through lens, hope in soil
Before dawn breaks over Dhaka, the paths beside Gulshan-Banani Lake remain quiet. While most people look forward to a little extra sleep on Fridays, a man stands beside the damp earth with a sapling in his hand. He digs a small hole, plants the tree and waters its roots.
Once the task is done, he lifts his camera onto his shoulder. In a few hours, he may be rushing to the scene of an important event or an accident.
The man is SM Ariful Amin Plabon, a photojournalist whose energy seems far greater than his small frame suggests.
Photojournalism is his profession, but it does not define his entire life. Away from his camera, he works as a volunteer, environmental activist, tree enthusiast and animal welfare supporter. He also helps people in need, often without seeking attention or recognition.
For Plabon, the camera is a means of earning a living, while humanity is a way of life. In Bangladesh’s rapidly changing media landscape, photojournalism is more than taking pictures. It is a way of recording history, preserving emotions and documenting moments that shape a nation.
Every frame can capture grief, struggle, political change or triumph. Plabon has spent years documenting some of the country’s most significant recent experiences, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the July mass uprising, national politics and climate change.
Working as a photojournalist for a national daily, he has continued to record these developments while pursuing long-term documentation beyond the demands of daily news coverage. His work has appeared in more than a hundred media outlets at home and abroad.
This year, TIME magazine, one of the world’s influential publications, published a photograph he took of Tarique Rahman. Photographs he captured of Begum Khaleda Zia’s funeral prayers and Tarique Rahman’s return to Bangladesh were also published by more than a hundred media outlets worldwide.
For a photojournalist, such recognition represents more than professional achievement. It demonstrates how a powerful image can cross linguistic and national boundaries.
Yet some of the most compelling parts of Plabon’s story begin when he puts his camera aside.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic brought much of the world to a standstill. People stayed indoors, hospitals struggled with the crisis, and fear surrounded the illness and the deaths it caused.
During that period, Plabon volunteered in some of the places where people needed help most.
In his home area of Dhunat upazila in Bogura, he spent considerable time supporting people affected by the pandemic.
His work included helping transport Covid-19 patients, delivering oxygen, supplying food and medicine to affected families, spraying disinfectants and distributing masks and personal protective equipment. He also assisted the administration in implementing lockdown measures.
One of the most difficult responsibilities was helping families deal with the deaths of loved ones.
Plabon took part in the burial of people who had died from Covid-19 and also assisted with the last rites of deceased members of the Hindu community. At a time when fear of infection kept some families away from their loved ones, volunteers continued to provide support and dignity to the dead.
Plabon was among those who stepped forward.
The experience left him with a powerful lesson: a person’s character often becomes most visible during a crisis.
The end of the pandemic did not bring an end to Plabon’s volunteer work.
Through Swapnaseba, an organisation working with visually impaired people in Dhunat, he continues to support people who face social and economic challenges. Its activities include distributing new clothes during Eid, providing financial assistance and giving cows and goats to help people earn a living.
The aim is not simply to offer temporary relief, but to help people live with greater dignity and independence.
As a member of Dhunatbasi Kalyan Sangstha, Plabon also works with people affected by floods. Blood donation programmes, assistance for talented students from financially disadvantaged families and tree-planting activities are among the initiatives he supports.
For him, social service is not an occasional commitment reserved for special occasions. It is a continuing responsibility that follows him beyond his professional life.
Environmental protection is another defining part of Plabon’s journey.
He has established an environmental and climate-focused volunteer organisation called Help the Nation. But his personal efforts to protect the environment began long before the organisation was formed.
For around a decade, he has been planting palmyra palm seeds. Many of the seeds he once placed in the soil have now grown into mature trees. He has also planted thousands of native fruit trees.
Wherever he travels in Bangladesh, whether for news assignments, personal visits or volunteer activities, he tries to carry tree saplings or seeds with him. Whenever possible, he works with local people to plant them.
The habit reflects a simple idea: wherever he goes, he wants to leave behind something that will continue to live and grow.
For Plabon, planting a tree is not merely a hobby. It is a quiet commitment to the future.
His concern for the environment is rooted partly in personal experience. Having grown up in an area vulnerable to river erosion and flooding, he has witnessed how natural forces can destroy homes and disrupt livelihoods.
These experiences have made riverine and char areas particularly important to his environmental work. In such places, planting trees is not only about increasing greenery; it is also part of a broader effort to strengthen fragile landscapes.
His approach places equal importance on small personal actions and larger discussions about climate change. International conferences, scientific data and policy decisions matter, but so does putting a seed into the earth and ensuring that it has a chance to grow.
Recently, Plabon collected 500 seeds of the endangered native karanja tree. Work is under way to grow seedlings from them, with the hope that the species can become more widespread again.
His tree-planting efforts also seek to support native biodiversity rather than focus solely on the number of trees planted.
Plabon’s environmental work extends beyond trees. He is a member of the Bangladesh Animal Welfare Association and regularly takes part in efforts to rescue injured or endangered wild animals.
He sees nature as an interconnected system in which people, trees, rivers and animals depend on one another.
That belief also shapes his regular Friday routine in Dhaka. He joins the 55 Kadamtala organisation’s tree-planting activities around Gulshan-Banani Lake early in the morning.
Even with a demanding work schedule during the rest of the week, he sets aside part of his day off for the environment.
He wants children to grow up in a world with cleaner air, greener surroundings and greater protection for nature.
Perhaps the most personal expression of Plabon’s environmental commitment is an initiative he began when his daughter was just one month old.
He started a programme called Carbon Neutral Baby, through which he aims to plant at least 20 trees every month with his daughter.
The initiative is more than a symbolic campaign. It represents a father’s promise to help create a greener future for his child.
The image of a father planting trees with his young daughter carries a message that reaches beyond one family. It reflects the idea that responsibility for the planet must pass from one generation to the next.
For Plabon, the future is not something to wait for. It is something to prepare for through everyday actions.
The demands of newspaper work leave little room for rest. Yet whenever he gets the opportunity, Plabon returns to his birthplace in Dhunat.
There, he visits visually impaired people, joins community initiatives and helps organise tree-planting programmes. When he cannot travel home, he continues his environmental and volunteer work in Dhaka and nearby areas.
His idea of a holiday is different from that of many people. Rather than simply taking a break, he sees it as an opportunity to do something more for society.
The work is not always visible to the public. Some of it happens in hospital corridors, some in flood-affected communities and some beside a newly planted tree. Much of it does not bring the kind of recognition that a widely published photograph might receive.
Photojournalists often remain in the background, their names printed in small letters beneath the images that draw readers’ attention. The photograph may become part of public memory, while the person behind the lens remains less familiar.
Plabon’s life, however, tells a story that extends beyond the photographs he takes.
He documents important moments in history through his camera, then puts it aside to stand beside people in need and care for the natural world.
In doing so, he has built an identity that goes beyond his profession: that of a photojournalist who records the present while planting hope for the future.
