Wedged into a great arch of north-eastern India which loops around and almost totally envelops it, Bangladesh sits on the silty and soggy estuaries of two of the world’s largest rivers – the Ganges and the Bhramaputra. The majority of the country’s 143 million inhabitants live on what are effectively the two rivers’ floodplains and annual floods – some of which have engulfed swathes of the country with unprecedented volumes of muddy water – are a part of the cycle of life.

In recent years, however, Bangladesh’s usual travails have been exacerbated by rising sea levels, an inexorably growing population competing over ever shrinking resources and farmland and toxic – often violent – politics dominated by Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, the grandes dames of Bangladeshi politics.

Photography and Editing by Patrick Brown.