India
Vivek Nayyar
A street photographer working in light and shadow.
Vivek Nayyar began his journey behind a long lens, not a short one. For years, his photography was built on patience learned in the wild — waiting on something else entirely — a bird taking flight, an animal stepping into a clearing, the exact fall of light across a landscape. That discipline has not left him; it has simply changed habitat. Today Vivek turns his eye toward the city, and the hunting ground has become the street.
Nayyar's photographs are characterised by a stark tonal contrast, dramatic use of light and shadow, and a sharply timed sense of waiting for the exact instant when light and subject align. His current images examine how urban light and architecture combine to produce brief, dramatic moments of contrast: figures caught at the precise instant as they cross from shadow into brightness, or from brightness into shadow, in the everyday geometry of the city.
He continues to work across both black-and-white and colour, with a consistent focus on light, shadow, and the discipline of timing a frame to its most dramatic possible moment. Over time he's learned that the best frame is rarely the one you rush toward. It's the one you sit still for.
On the wall
