Sandeep Biswas provides a peek into reflected realities of four cities

Sandeep Biswas is an Indian photographer with over two decades of experience in art, commercial and social documentary photography. His practice as a photographer has earned him a few prestigious awards, fellowships like the Japan Foundation Fellowship 2001, India Habitat Centre Fellowship for Photography 2005, Ministry of Culture Senior Artist Fellowship 2017, and an artist-in-residence programme in the United States.

STIR caught up with him to feature his series of photographs, titled Reflections, that document his travels in a manner that is lyrical, mysterious and visually quite stimulating.

“After years of being a photographer and searching for the truth and reality, I discovered the possibility of expressing myself beyond photo-realism. This exploration led me to discover an alternate space that enabled me to create my own visual monologue, with the help of reflections,” says Biswas.

“I rediscovered myself in a world where the urban spaces and structures reflected my own subconscious and recreated an alternate vision of escape, desires and a personal struggle to achieve, sometimes even the impossible,” says the photographer who has had seven solo exhibitions and over 50 group exhibitions in various parts of the world.

His works have been invited to be part of various international art and photography festivals as well.

“I started to feel as if we are an inter-reflection of everything we are surrounded with, affecting our minds, thoughts and expressions, sometimes just as a silent observer of the constant change. Our minds and our vision accept these changes as our present reality, taking our past into a haze of memories and transforming them into metaphors. I stare at these surfaces, juxtaposing with these facades and my imagination recreating them into a surreal and visual imagery,” says Biswas, who is presently also a curator for photographic arts for VASA, an international online platform for media studies.

“My process of searching for these images in various layers of the reflective surfaces like glass, metal and water helps me find my own alternate space. This helps further enhance my vision beyond the physical world, transforming it to a poetic perspective through my conscious reaction towards the world that we live in,” says Biswas, who is the founder of Grayscale Academy of Photography and Creative Vision.