From Vrindavan’s Widows To The Sundarbans’ Tigers, Rana Pandey On Photographing The Invisible India
Kolkata-based Rana Pandey has built a reputation as a photographer who goes looking for the margins, and then stays there for the story to breathe.
Published : April 20, 2026 at 2:14 PM IST
There are photographers who travel the world collecting sunsets. Then there are photographers who collect silences. Rana Pandey is the latter. His photographs linger in places where stories take time to reveal themselves: widows in Vrindavan who speak softly about freedom, women carpet weavers who knotted the carpets in India’s new Parliament, villagers in the Sundarbans who live with the daily possibility of a tiger attack. Rana, who is based in Kolkata, has built a reputation as a photographer who goes looking for the margins, and then stays there long enough for the story to breathe.
His work has earned recognition across the globe, from the Istanbul Photo Awards to the Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest, and exhibitions as far away as Russia’s Chelyabinsk State Museum. But if you ask him about influence or recognition, he’ll shrug and return to something much simpler: The story and the patience required to find it.
The Moment That Began the Vrindavan Widow Project
Rana’s long engagement with the widows of Vrindavan began, as many meaningful stories do, almost by accident. In 2018, he was an intern at a news magazine when he travelled to photograph the now-famous Widow Holi celebrations. The event, where widows celebrate the festival of colours in defiance of social stigma, is visually irresistible to photographers. “There was colour everywhere,” Rana recalls. “Emotion, energy... everything a photographer wants.”
But as the event wound down, he noticed a small group of widows sitting quietly in a corner. Their white saris were splashed with bright Holi colours. But their expressions told a different story. “They didn’t look joyful,” he says. “And that’s when it hit me; the celebration was over. They would go back to their lives of isolation.”
For many photographers, that might have been the end of the assignment. For this lensman, it was the beginning. He returned to Vrindavan later, determined to understand what life looked like beyond the festival photographs. At the Maitri Ghar Vidhwa Ashram, where many widows live, the reception was cautious. The women had seen photographers come and go before. Trust was not automatic.
“Patience is everything,” Rana says. “Instead of immediately taking out my camera, I listened to their stories.” That choice slowly changed the dynamic. The women began to speak about their lives, their histories, their struggles with dignity and independence. Only after that did Rana begin photographing them. For him, the lesson was: vulnerable communities are not subjects. They are collaborators.
The Woman Who Chose the Street Over Shelter
Sometimes a single encounter changes how you understand an entire story. While walking through Vrindavan, he met a woman who once lived in an ashram but had since moved to the streets. At first, the decision seemed puzzling. Why leave a shelter? Her answer was disarmingly clear. The ashram had rules. Restrictions. Curfews. Systems meant to protect, but also to control.
“She told me freedom mattered more to her,” he says. It was a moment that reshaped his understanding of the widows’ lives. Poverty was not always the biggest burden. Lack of autonomy was. For some women, even the uncertainty of street life felt preferable to living without independence.
The Photographer Who Looks for Stories on the Margins
Rana’s work consistently gravitates toward communities that exist slightly outside mainstream visibility. Why these stories? “It’s my duty as a storyteller,” he says. That sense of responsibility is what separates documentary photographers from travel photographers who simply capture destinations. His images are less about places and more about lives unfolding within them.
One of Rana’s most remarkable projects took him to Mirzapur, where he documented female carpet weavers working with Obeetee Carpets. What initially appeared to be a simple craft story revealed a remarkable national connection. These women had collectively tied over 600 million knots to create carpets installed in New Parliament Building. What struck Pandey most was the women themselves. “They barely talk about their hard work,” he says. Their pride revealed itself in other ways. When the women were shown their completed carpets in the factory’s display hall, they rushed toward them, touching the fabric and examining the patterns. They compared their work with others. In that moment, Pandey realized, these women were not just “workers”, they were artists.
One of the weavers Pandey met was Rekha Devi, whose life story could easily fill a book. Originally from Nepal, she had been lured to Mirzapur under the pretext of visiting a village fair. Her marriage soon revealed a darker reality: a husband struggling with alcoholism and gambling. Money disappeared. Food sometimes did too. Eventually, Rekha made a difficult decision. She left the marriage and joined a women’s weaving programme. For Pandey, stories like hers reveal the context behind seemingly ordinary work. The carpets may decorate government halls and luxury homes but the lives that created them contain far more complex narratives.
Torn Between the Tiger and the Tide
Pandey’s current project takes him deep into the fragile ecosystem of the Sundarbans. The title alone 'Torn Between the Tiger and the Tide' sounds like something from a novel but it describes a very real crisis. Rising sea levels are swallowing farmland and homes. Drinking water is becoming scarce. As land shrinks, Bengal Tiger territories are disrupted, pushing the animals closer to human settlements.
The result is deadly encounters. One experience during his reporting left a lasting impression on Pandey. He was interviewing a tiger attack survivor named Ashish. As the conversation stretched into evening, Ashish became visibly uneasy. When it was time to leave, he refused to walk home alone. “Since the attack, he’s afraid of the dark,” Pandey recalls.
With international recognition from competitions such as the Istanbul Photo Awards and the Andrei Stenin contest, Pandey’s work now reaches global audiences. But the awards have not changed his process. “I still choose stories based on what resonates with me,” he says.
If anything, the recognition has strengthened his confidence. International audiences, he notes, are often fascinated by stories emerging from India’s complex social realities. They want to know more.
Ethics of Photographing Difficult Lives
Documentary photography walks a delicate line. Images can easily reduce people to symbols: poverty, suffering, tragedy. Pandey is deeply aware of that risk. “I prioritise time and trust before photographing,” he says. Context and consent are essential. Sometimes the most ethical decision is not to take the photograph at all. “There have been moments when I chose not to photograph,” he says. Because the goal is not to capture suffering. The goal is to tell a complete human story.
In the end, Rana Pandey’s philosophy of photography is almost old-fashioned. Documentary photography, he believes, should tell the truth. If it moves the viewer emotionally, that’s a bonus. If it provokes thought, even better. But the first responsibility is honesty.
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