About Payal Kakkar

Payal Kakkar a self-taught artist from Delhi, India who blurs the lines between documentary and art photography. Exploring themes from architectural heritage to landscape and environment conservation, her work focuses on colour, line and form to make an emotional connection with the viewer. Her photographs focus on landscapes impacted by human consumption and activity. By arranging form, line and colour, her work strives to highlight an emotional dimension by drawing connections to the sacredness of water, the picturesque nature of the undoing of landscape, and the abstract aesthetics of transformation towards sustainable future.

Kakkar is an active environmentalist and an educator. She has specialized in garbage treatment for towns but moved into photography as a means to have a more immediate impact on conservation.

She was one of the commissioned photographer of climate change mitigation program of Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) in India. She photographed climate change mitigation programs in Rajkot and Bhuj. These photographs were a part of the exhibition, ‘In search of an Oasis’ exhibited at Open Spaces, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

In Sept 2022, Kakkar received Honourable Mention Award in ‘Portrait‘ category, ‘Photographer of the Year, 2022’ hosted by Indian Photo Festival for the photograph ‘Children of Landfills of Delhi’ from the series,’ Afterlives of Migration’. The series, ‘Growing up on landfills of Delhi’ from ‘Afterlives of Migration’ body of work was shortlisted for the Hossein Farmani's curational selection of 'State of the World', Paris Photo Prize(PX3). Also, ‘Mining and Its Afterlives in Goa, India’ was among the 4 shortlisted projects for Iyarkai Grant (Conservation Grant), Chennai Photo Biennale 2021. In 2021 and 2022 her works on environmental photography was shortlisted in Siena Drone Awards under abstract category.