Sharbendu De is a lens-based artist, academic and a writer from India with over 15 years of experience. His philosophy is influenced by deliberations on the human society, gender, climate change, environmental degradation and its impact on human and non-human societies as well as the debates on ‘time’ and ‘space’. He is exploring a contemporary vocabulary while positing his aesthetics in the ethnicity of his cultural roots beyond the confines of objectivity and truth in a post-truth era. He uses a host of storytelling approaches including documentary, conceptual, staged and constructed as well as uses audio and video.

De has an MA in Photojournalism from the University of Westminster, London (2010). Alongside his practice, he presently teaches photography and Visual Arts at Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, and Sri Aurobindo Centre for Art & Communication, New Delhi. In 2018, Feature Shoot recognised him as an Emerging Photographer of the Year. He was also shortlisted for Lucie Foundation’s Emerging Artist of the Year Scholarship 2018.

De’s seven-year-long project Imagined Homeland (IH; 2013- ongoing) on the Lisu tribe (Arunachal Pradesh, India) won the 2018 Lucie Foundation’s Photo Made Scholarship, received an Art Research grant from the India Foundation for the Arts (2017), was shortlisted for Lucie Foundation’s ‘Photo Made Scholarship 2017’ and was a nominee for PhotogrVhy Grant 2017. It will be showcased in FORMAT, U.K. (15 Mar-14 April 2019). His conceptual series Between Grief and Nothing (2015-16)’ on trauma as an aftermath of the Nepal earthquakes was exhibited in Econtros da Imagem (2016), Photo Kathmandu (2017) and Geothe Institut (New Delhi, 2016; Mumbai, 2017), cited in WITNESS (a World Press Photo magazine), featured in GUP, LensCulture, Invisible Photographer Asia, PIX Quarterly, Der Greif, Dodho etc. He has exhibited in France, USA, Georgia, Portugal, U.K., Nepal and across India.

De has worked in seven natural disasters including the Nepal earthquakes (2015), Jammu & Kashmir Floods (2014), Uttarakhand flash floods (2013 & 2014) and the Asian Tsunami (2004-08). He’s widely travelled across India, Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh, and photographed stories on environmental conservation, human rights, gender, tribal rights etc. His work has been featured in various national and international publications. De mostly works for international not for profits and cultural organisations. He lives in New Delhi.