Swapan Parekh (b. 1966) is one of the most individualistic voices in Indian photography. Son of legendary photographer Kishor Parekh, it was his father’s untimely death on assignment in 1982, that spurred the then sixteen-year-old to pick up a camera as an ode to his father. 

With his early years spent in documentary and journalism, armed with a stint at the International Centre of Photography, he later went on to revolutionise print advertising in India. Using the vocabulary of his documentary years, Swapan pioneered the use of a distinct aesthetic that through its immediacy created ‘orchestrated realisms’, on a scale hitherto unseen in Indian advertising.

Alongside, he has continued to nurture his personal work with an eye that is delicate and intuitive—seeking, finding, extracting curious configurations from his everyday. With a visual lexicon that is defiantly his, his work stays within the periphery of the real, while flirting with the outrageousness of the imagined.

For decades, Parekh’s work has been published, recognised and awarded across these parallel realities, be it documentary, advertising, commissioned or the personal. Whether it’s winning the World Press Photo Award, being on their jury multiple times or exhibiting his personal work Between Me & I at the FOAM Fotografiemuseum, Swapan’s vision continues to be relevant to contemporary eyes.