Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Grant for Photography

The Umrao Singh Sher-Gil (USG) Grant for Photography was established in 2015 in the name of Vivan Sundaram’s grand-father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil (1870–1954), a photographer of exceptional talent, whose principal subjects were his family and himself. He produced a family album of vast proportions, and his self-portraits spanning almost 60 years make up a unique archive. In 2007, the first retrospective exhibition of Umrao Singh’s vintage prints was held at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival in France, followed by exhibitions at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi and Mumbai, India. Umrao Singh is regarded as a pioneering figure of the mise-en-scène or staged photography in India.

 

Since 2025, SSAF has pledged two grants of INR 5,00,000 each, to photography projects working with staged/constructed images and to documentary photography, while recognising the blurred boundaries between the methodologies and forms of both genres.

Submissions for the Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Grant for Photography 2026 are now closed.

Jury | Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Grant for Photography 2026

Azadeh Akhlaghi (Jury Chair) was born in Shiraz, and trained in computer science before turning to photography and film. She uses conceptual and staged photography to create meticulously researched, large-scale montages of historical events in a mode that combines fiction with performative realism. She has worked as an assistant director to acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, and her short films have screened at prominent international film festivals. Azadeh’s photography has been featured in major exhibitions including at the Contemporary Photography Museum, Chicago; Somerset School of Art, London; the Paris Photo; Shanghai and Seoul Biennials; Photo London; the Contemporary Museum of Art, Tehran; the Ulrich Museum, Wichita; and most recently at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Massachusetts. She divides her time between Tehran and New York.

Prashant Panjiar, a self-taught photographer, worked full-time as a photojournalist and editor in mainstream media from 1984 to 2001. Since then he has been working independently as a photographer specializing in reportage, editorial and documentary photography, a photo editor and a curator. He is the co-founder of Nazar Foundation that promotes lens-based art, and Goa Open Arts, that conducts a multi-disciplinary arts festival and grants for artists in Goa. His more recent books are Amongst the Believers – The Kumbh Mela at Prayag (published by Arthshila Trusts, 2024), Indianisms (self-published 2023) and That Which Is Unseen (published by Navajivan Trust, 2021).

Ruchir Joshi is a film-maker and writer. He has made award-winning non-fiction films that include Eleven Miles, Memories of Milk City and Tales from Planet Kolkata. His photo work includes a documentation project of traditional handicrafts in Eastern India, documentation of the new areas and shifting dwelling spaces in the NCR (1999) in collaboration with demographer Dr. Veronique Dupont and CSH, and text/photo essays for Granta magazine in 2010, 2019 and 2022. He has written on the work of photographers Achinto and Gauri Gill, an essay on photography in Calcutta — Calcutta, the Naked Emperor is Dead (2012) and most recently the work of Yash Sheth in Granta’s India issue (2025). His books include the novel The Last Jet-Engine Laugh (2001), Electric Feather (editor, 2009), Poriborton – An Election Diary (2011), Great Eastern Hotel (2025).

Grantees

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