Shahidul Alam (শহিদুল আলম) is a Bangladeshi media institution builder, a photojournalist, public speaker, storyteller, writer, blogger, curator, and educationist.

Alam founded Drik Picture Library in 1989, Pathshala in 1998, the Chobi Mela International Photography Festival in 1999, and Majority World in 2004. Drik's work as an internet provider introduced email to Bangladesh in the early 1990s. Drik developed a Bangla font for the internet, Bangladesh's first webzine, and first portal.

Alam's books include Nature's Fury (2007) and My Journey as a Witness (2011). A photographer for over forty years, his work has been featured in publications worldwide and exhibited in MOMA, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Royal Albert Hall, and Kuala Lumpur National Art Gallery. He was the first Asian chair of the International Jury of World Press Photo. Alam has spoken at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Stanford universities.

Kazi Shahidul Alam was born in Dacca, East Pakistan (modern-day Bangladesh), in 1955 and grew up in Dhanmondi. He was one of the three children of physician Kazi Abul Monsur and child psychologist Quazi Anwara Monsur. He belongs to the Kazi family of Rajapur in Faridpur district.

In his childhood, he used to float through Dhaka's congested arteries atop his slight fold-up bicycle. He studied at the boarding school Jhenaidah Cadet College.

Alam took his undergraduate education in the University of Liverpool. During his time in Liverpool, he made a habit of walking in the streets in his lungi, a traditional South Asian garment. In his college year, he was introduced to activism through his involvement with the Socialist Workers Party. He graduated from the university in 1976 by earning his BSc in biochemistry and genetics.

In 1989, he set up Drik Picture Library, and in 1998, Pathshala South Asian Institute of Photography (later Pathshala South Asian Media Institute) in Dhaka. Pathshala "has trained hundreds of photographers". Alam founded the Chobi Mela International Photography Festival in 1999, the most important and prestigious photography festival in Asia, of which he remains a director. Alam set up the South Asian Media Academy.

Alam is among the last to have photographed Nelson Mandela. This was during a meeting between Professor Muhammad Yunus and Madiba on 10 July 2009, at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg.

Crossfire is a series of photographs taken by Alam. The exhibition was curated by Jorge Villacorta, a Peruvian art critic, curator, and colleague of Alam. The exhibition was completed in 2010 and displayed at Drik Gallery in Dhaka. The photographs show locations and objects where extrajudicial killings happened because of Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB). Human Rights Watch has called RAB a "death squad" because of these reported killings. RAB was established in 2004 as a paramilitary force to combat gangsters and thugs in the streets, but in late 2007, the battalion was accused of over 350 extrajudicial killings and the torturing of hundreds more.