About
Photo: Steve McCurry
Sanjay Austa is a photojournalist based in New Delhi, India. However he spends more than 8 months a year on the road traveling on assignments.
He started his career as a journalist and the switch to photography was gradual. His photographs and his choice of subjects however reflect his journalistic pedigree. His first assignment took him on an adventurous two-month expedition to Kanchenjunga, where he documented the Indian Army’s climb to the summit.
Since then he has photographed myriad subjects in diverse geographical climes including the Wild in the African Savannas, the Life in the Arctic , the Deserts in the Middle East and lives of ordinary Americans all across the United States. He has a penchant for human-interest issues for which he travels extensively in India and abroad.
His photo-essays are published regularly in the Indian and the International Media including the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Traveller, The Sunday Guardian, Departures, Centurion, Mint-WSJ, Outlook Traveller etc. His photo-feature on the 1984 anti-Sikh Delhi riots was exhibited in California and UK by various human rights groups in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
He is a guest faculty at various photography and journalism institutes including the Indian Institute of Mass Communication(IIMC), New Delhi, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, NADT Nagpur and various Delhi University Colleges.
Besides lectures he also writes on travel and on social, cultural and Photography issues for the media. He has done four picture books on World Heritage Monuments for Penguin Books. He was awarded the Karamveer Puraskar Award in 2010 for his photo-essays on social and cultural issues.
He is presently working on multiple long term photography projects. These projects focus on a particular subject but they are primarily a visual documentation of India using these subjects as a prop. Some of them include:
1 Gully Cricket: Cricket in our Backyard. Photographing Cricket as its playing all across India.
2. The Great Indian Railways: Visual documentation of the Indian Railways- India biggest employer.
3. Gay In India: Documenting the middle-class homosexual community in India.
4. From Lost Childhood to Uncertain Future: Documenting the second generation of 1984 anti-sikh riot victims.
5. Taaza Khabar: Nation of Newspaper Readers: Photographing the reading public across India.
6. Forty and Done: Documenting the plight of Indian sex-workers after they enter old age.
Contact : 91-9810672755
e-mail: sanjayausta@gmail.com