Professional Experience:
Fifteen years of independent practice as a documentary photographer and media entrepreneur, running photoSynth Labs since 2011: end-to-end delivery of over 650 commissioned projects for corporate, nonprofit, and cultural clients in India and internationally, including project scoping, budgeting, vendor coordination, and team management of a production team of ten or more across simultaneous, multi-city engagements. Built sustained institutional partnerships with museums, NGOs, and cultural organisations, and scaled business revenue 300 percent over five years through pricing strategy and process systematisation.
Formal training in anthropology has extended this practice into research, programme coordination, and M&E roles in the social sector. At the Museum of Art & Photography, Bangalore (2023-2024), established a digitisation lab under FCRA-compliant funding, designed data management and compliance frameworks to international archival standards, and digitised 5,240 (of 10,800) artefacts from a historical photographic collection, alongside archival research on gender narratives in Indian cinema for curatorial programming.
At SamaBhav UK (2025), coordinated a multi-city programme delivered in partnership with the South Asian Heritage Trust, managing over 200 stakeholder communications, resolving compliance issues in real time, and documenting the programme through embedded organisational ethnography, producing a structured learning report with operational recommendations on programme design and facilitation strategy.
Additional experience includes operations advisory for a performance venue (audience development and programming strategy informed by direct observation), and ethnographic documentation of a public art and community impact project at Azim Premji University, using photographic and audio methods to capture spectatorship and institutional space dynamics.
Core strengths: qualitative and ethnographic research, mixed-methods research design, programme and stakeholder management, budgeting and compliance, monitoring and evaluation, documentary photography and visual storytelling, and research writing for both academic and public-facing audiences. Comfortable operating across research, creative, and operational registers, and accustomed to working under resource constraints and tight delivery timelines.