Shahidul Alam (born 1955) is a Bangladeshi photojournalist, teacher and social activist. He has been a photographer for more than forty years and "his photographs have been published in almost every major western media outlet".
Alam founded the Drik Picture Library in 1989, the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka in 1998, "which has trained hundreds of photographers",[1] and the Chobi Mela International Photography Festival in 1999. Alam is a visiting professor at the University of Sunderland in the UK. His books include Nature's Fury (2007) and My Journey as a Witness (2011).
In 2014 he was awarded the Shilpakala Padak by the President of Bangladesh and in 2018 the Humanitarian Award from the Lucie Awards.
On 5 August 2018, Alam was arrested and detained shortly after giving an interview to Al Jazeera and posting live videos on Facebook that criticized the government's violent response to the 2018 Bangladesh road safety protests.[3] Many international humanitarian organisations and news media called for his release without charge. He was granted bail on 20 November 2018. He was one of the persons of the year selected by Time Magazine in 2018.