Street shooter: Photographer Vicky Roy's new exhibition captures striking shots of the Himalayas
Award-winning photographer Vicky Roy returns with a new show, The Scarred Land: New Mountainscapes, comprising of a series of striking shots of the Himalayas.
He ran away from his village in West Bengal at the age of 11, because his parents couldn't afford to take care of their seven children, making his way to Delhi and finding a home at the Salaam Baalak Trust. Street life was the subject of his first photo exhibition - which won him accolades and a showing in London. But Vicky Roy's new show, The Scarred Land: New Mountainscapes, comprises a series of striking shots of the Himalayas.
"I first visited the mountains in 2001, as Salaam Balaak Trust would take us to the mountains during our summer vacations," says Roy. "In those days, there was almost no construction."
The loss of that pristine beauty is the ethos behind this series of photographs, which Roy shot over five years in different seasons and weather conditions across Himachal Pradesh.
"I wanted to capture the rush towards development and the torment of the majestic mountains, rocks, rivers and valleys as they are assaulted by diesel-spewing machines," he says.
At the Salaam Baalak Trust-an NGO for street children and orphans that was started by Mira Nair after the success of Salaam Bombay! in 1988-Roy learned the basics of photography from British filmmaker Dixie Benjamin, who was making a documentary about the organisation. Once he turned 18 and struck out on his own, Roy found a mentor in portrait photographer Anay Mann-eventually making his debut exhibition with Home Street Home, a series of photographs documenting the lives of children living at Salaam Baalak Trust, in 2007.
The Scarred Land: New Mountainscapes, opens December 2 at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi.
