Following an accomplished career in television and radio journalism in India, I moved to the UK in 2009, to complete my Masters in International Relations from King’s College London.
I am not formally trained in the language of photography. However, for as long as I remember, Art has been my anchor. I was diagnosed with clinical depression in 2010, a year following my move to the UK from India.
In late 2013, following the birth of my daughter and the simultaneous deterioration of my mother’s health, the darkness within me became unbearable. I remember we had bought an amateur camera to take photos on our family holidays.
I started using it to photograph my newborn child. It was healing... the act of connecting with her in a theatre, where both of us were enacting an equally important part. Where I did not have the burden to wield power over her as her provider.
Photography hence, helped me find my inner balance.
So in that sense, my practice is autobiographical in nature. My relationship with photography has been that of identifying my strongest emotions and then finding a correlation... a representation for them in the world.
The shift from photographing an imaginary utopia for the first eight years of my practice to my focus on reality has been a difficult journey. I started out as a family photographer in 2014. I would say I was primarily making images of my curiosities back then.
I was curious about what a perfect childhood devoid of abuse, trauma and coercion would look like. So I made images that were almost tyrannical in their depiction of superbness.
I lost my mother in May of 2019. I think losing the fulcrum of my existence in that sense, forced me to address the truth.
First, the series “Changing the Conversation” and now “A Thousand Cuts” are as much a dialogue with myself as they are an acts of listening.
I believe that the world will become way more complex before it will start to become simple. And my role, as an artist is to offer counter narratives from the margins, so there is greater debate and possibility for paraphrasing narratives of consciousness.
With the help of a mentorship programme - Trace Mentorship, I have been able to gain and expanded understanding of image making and hence have adopted an interdisciplinary approach in my recent works.
My works have received several international awards including winner of British Journal of Photography - Female in Focus 2022; Photographer of the Year - Tokyo International Foto Awards 21’, Gold Winner - Open Awards at Association of Photographers 21’, Portrait Award Winner - The Independent Photographer 21’ , Portrait Award Winner - Indian Photo Fest 21’, Winner - Edition 365 BJP.
Exhibitions include the Headon Photo Fest in Australia, an OOH exhibit across UK and the most recent exhibit in India of the series focusing on the Rohingyas, as part of the largest refugee conference supported by Action Aid India and The Azadi Project. Some of my works have also been showcased in galleries across UK, Belgium, Japan, Iran, Italy and India.