Soumita Bhattacharya
ICP (International Center of Photography)
Seattle, WA, USA
Soumita Bhattacharya is a Visual Storyteller based in the greater Seattle area. She works on stories of culture, identity, and performing arts. Soumita serves on the board of Asian American Journalists Association (Seattle Chapter) as the Vice President programs. She has served on the board of Blue Earth Alliance, a Seattle based nonprofit that supports visual storytellers working on critical environmental and social issues as Chairperson (Events). Some of her other roles using visual art for social impact include programming for Visual arts and immersive storytelling for the largest US-based South Asian film festival (Tasveer, Seattle), independent curator for Just Another Photo Festival (JAPF, India) bringing photography to blue-collar and inner city areas in India. Her work has been published in major newspapers in India, and in books and magazines on dance. Soumita is a graduate of the Documentary Photography and Photojournalism program at the International Center of Photography in NYC.
- Arts
- Editorial
- Interview
- Portrait
- Reporting
- Video editing
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Soumita Bhattacharya
B‘deshi [Bideshi, means foreigners in Bengali] Bangladesh is one of the world‘s most densely populated countries, with its people crammed into a delta of rivers that empties into the Bay of Bengal. Poverty is deep and widespread, and the political scene remains volatile. The major employer is agriculture, but it is unable to meet the demand for jobs, many Bangladeshis seek work abroad.
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Soumita Bhattacharya
Immigration to the United States from Bangladesh grew exponentially in the 1990s and the 2000s when thousands of Bangladeshis were able to legally migrate to the United States through the Diversity Visa Program/ Lottery. The diversity immigrant category was created by the Immigration Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-649) to stimulate “new seed” immigration from parts of the world that are under-represented in the U.S.