Progressive Street

Street has been my way of discovering new places and its people.

I started shooting street around 2010 during my undergraduate engineering studies in India, after being deeply moved by the work of Raghu Rai, Henri Cartier Bresson and Elliott Erwitt. The deep sense of aesthetics in their photographs, while being strongly rooted in a fleeting 'moment', showed how life in all its simplicity is beautiful. It embodied serendipity. I began to feel that the act of freezing a moment of time within the confines of a frame is transformative, as much for the scene, as for the viewer who connects with it.

This has been my driving force, and I have grown to love the long hours of aimlessly walking through city streets with a camera, always on the lookout for an interesting story. I then moved to the Netherlands in 2012 to continue my studies, where I got a PhD in Applied Physics at Delft. Aside from my research, I have shot extensively in the Netherlands and during my travels around Europe and India. Street has been my way of discovering new places and their people. What I like most about it is the triumph of the unknown, as these photographs really cannot be 'planned' and are 'out there' for the one who cares to see. Even though most of the time I miss more than I end up capturing, the fact that I saw a glimpse of order in the chaos of urban life is deeply satisfying, and addictive!

With street, I have discovered that there are streaks of similarity that paint all our lives. It has also helped induce in the seemingly mundane an element of possibility, which has given me an abiding interest in all life around me. It is now a defining aspect of my life.

I lived in Bangalore, India. Now I live in Nice as a researcher at the Université Côte d'Azur.

Group Exhibitions