ARTIST'S STATEMENT //

It was after spending nine monsoons of my childhood that I got my first camera, gifted by my photographer father. He died after a few years but photography remains there forever - with me, within me. I didn't struggle much to choose the subject of my photography to convey my message to the greater world. Rather the subject chose me. I was a student of Ramakrishna Mission for twelve years - an academic institution which believes serving the poor and downtrodden of the society is similar to serving the God. My photographic journey is not away from that noble teaching. With my camera I talk about subalterns - the distressed, the poor and the marginalized of the Indian subcontinent.

Capturing India is always a difficult task. A country with more than one thousand million population, more than two hundred native communities and more than thousands of dialects changes her ‘cultural’ nature almost every ten kilometers. But that diversity attracts me the most. I always find a spiritual and meditative interlude under that diversified milieu. After a couple of years into photography, I realized somehow I also have been touched by that hidden meditativeness of my country - to me, capturing India is highly meditative. The day I will be able to spread that hymn of meditativeness to my viewers, I will consider myself ‘successful’ as an artist.