Portrait of An Artist

Portrait of An Artist is Rohit Chawla’s long-term photographic exploration of the private worlds of Indian artists. Developed through years of visits to studios across India, the project looks beyond the conventional portrait to examine the relationship between an artist, the objects that surround them and the space in which ideas become works of art. Chawla deliberately worked largely in black and white, stripping away colour and spectacle so that attention rests on gesture, personality, atmosphere and the accumulated evidence of creative practice. Artists are photographed among canvases, sculptures, books, tools, unfinished works and the everyday objects that give each studio its individual character. The project includes generations of modern and contemporary practitioners, from S.H. Raza, Krishen Khanna and Akbar Padamsee to Arpita Singh, Atul Dodiya, Bharti Kher, Subodh Gupta, Mithu Sen, T. Venkanna and many others. The photographs ultimately became the book Portrait of An Artist, with text by writer-curator Kishore Singh, a foreword by Kiran Nadar and publication by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Mapin Publishing in 2026. Together, the photographs and texts form an important visual archive of artists, their working environments and the private rituals behind public works of art.