During my first week at RCA, all the students had to present their work in 10 slides. It was more difficult to talk about your work than anticipated but we manages to push through and with such success. I have never come across such an amazing, supportive and talented cohort in my life.

The following are my slides from the pecha kucha.

The photograph above is of Calcutta, my hometown, taken by Steve McCurry in 1996. Two years before I was born. Fastforward 23 years, this street in Calcutta is the same as before. The heart of the city is bustling with people of all cultures. The distinct concoction of various smells, the sweet and spiciness of food, the sound of the buses, black and yellow taxis, autos, hand-pulled rickshaws, carts and trains whizzing by, a nonchalant goat, chicken or cow crossing the road, the colours, the confusion, the chaos and the love – this is Calcutta.

(2013-2015)

The photographs above are taken by me. Here I have tried to capture the true essence of my city.

(2014-2016)

McCurry’s work had inspired a lot of my paintings at the inception of my love for the arts. I worked on my technical skills by experimenting and using different mediums such as oil paints, watercolors, conte, charcoal, chalk, pencil etc.

The watercolour above was a milestone in my life. It was inspired by McCurry’s photograph of the ship breaking docks in Karachi, Pakistan. The miniscule man is towered by the magnificence of his creation. That is exactly how eminently I perceive the Arts.

The next couple of years was a whirlwind where I studied business as a major in 3 different cities – Singapore, Dubai and Sydney. At the same time I did summer credit courses in painting and photography at Oxford, RISD and UAL.

(2015)

The photograph above is from a series of photographs I created in my time at Oxford. Below is my project brief.

The theme for my final assignment is Alice in Wonderland, but with a modern take on the classic characters. On 4 July 1862, in a rowing boat travelling on the Isis from Folly Bridge, Oxford to Godstow for a picnic outing, 10-year-old Alice asked Charles Dodgson to entertain her and her sisters, Edith and Lorina, with a story. Dodgson regaled the girls with fantastic stories of a girl, named Alice, and her adventures after she fell into a rabbit-hole. With the help of my friends in the Oxford campus, I want to recreate the characters with basic hints and portray that in my photography. I’m going to capture portraits with a play of light and colour. I also plan to keep in mind that the people’s persona match those of the characters. 

(2016)

Next I studied life drawing in RISD. Drawing human form was very intriguing.

(2016)

The watercolour (right) was inspired from JMW Turner’s painting (left) titled ‘The Fall of Anarchy’. This is a part of a series of watercolours called the ‘The Pain beneath my Grace’.

(2018)

I participated in the Magnum Intensive Documentary Workshop at the London College of Communication where I spent a month developing an idea to creating a zine of my photographs. Below is my project brief.

India worships more than 33 million Gods and Goddesses. Lord Krishna is considered to be the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
I changed my religion 5 years ago to follow the teachings of Lord Krishna. I found out that Krishna was brought to the west by Srila Prabhupada in 1966. Today, there are millions of Krishna devotees around the world. The process of enlightenment in Krishna Consciousness begins with Faith and ends with Union. I aim to portray these two words in my work, not as a transcendental belief but as a harmony of love, laughter, faith, and union, shared amongst the devotees, and shared with the Lord himself. In my three weeks in London, I visited the Hare Krishna temple in Soho, Bhaktivedanta Manor, as well as celebrated a festival in Newbury to explore this beautiful religion. I tried to capture it’s magic as seen by the world, and the peaceful moments as well that Krishna Bhakts experience in unison with the people around them. This, in my opinion, encapsulates the true meaning of this religion.

(2019)

Art trickled into my works at Business School as well. The images above are from a marketing project I worked on for an Australian company called Export Connect. I created packaging prototypes for their new product, ruby chocolates, after researching the Australian chocolate industry, competitors and the consumers. The foundation for these prototypes were based on the results derived from neuromarketing experiments I conducted on the customers response to different product packagings of competitors.

I aspire my future works to be a synergy between art and photography. Peter Beards work (above) is truly inspiring to me.