About

Sheetal Mallar is a contemporary Indian photographer. In her work, she has developed extended portraiture of various urban subcultures and professional groups, exploring the tension between the individual personality and the collective context. Her photographs focus on the delicate, unspoken relationships that bind people to places. They are luminously attentive to the layers of active and latent signals by which individuals signal their identity and aspirations, the strategies through which they navigate between public appearance and private life. Several of Mallar’s ongoing projects engage with the culture, topography and narratives of popular Indian cinema. Her photographic work has appeared in Architectural Digest, Verve, Motherland and Invisible Photographer Asia, among other publications and platforms. It has been exhibited in Goa Photo and the Terra di Cinema Festival, Sicily. Sheetal Mallar’s first solo exhibition, ‘Transients’, was presented by Art Musings, Bombay, in 2020.

– Ranjit Hoskote