Kishor Parekh Award for Contemporary Photography 2025–26
Karan Arora (b. 1982, Mumbai)
Karan Arora works across portraiture, self-portraiture, and abstract image-making, using photography to engage with presence, vulnerability, and internal states as they surface through lived experience. His practice unfolds through time and proximity, allowing images to emerge through trust and exchange rather than direction. It is shaped by physical sensation, memory, and states of mind that are not always visible or easily articulated. Across these approaches, photography functions as a process of recording rather than resolution. The image is held as a trace of what was felt or experienced, continuing to exist as memory once the moment itself has passed.
To Be Seen
To Be Seen is an ongoing photographic inquiry rooted in presence, trust, and vulnerability. Rather than approaching portraiture as an act of direction or authorship, the work emerges from moments in which the photographer becomes a receptive medium—an echo of the person in front of him. The images are not shaped by a predetermined vision, but by what the subject chooses to share as their guard begins to fall.
Each image carries the residue of the encounter, holding the imprint of energy, surrender, and mutual presence.
With: Alka, Ankit, Anonymous, Disha, Elena, Hyo, Kuo, Max, Meera, Moksha, Nori, Preran, Sakura, Sara, Sarah, Shreya, Siddhi, Vidur, Yoko.
To see all the photographs in To Be Seen, click here.
I See Me
I sense my identity as a fluid construct formed through relational experience.
These images reflect on the self as something felt, inherited, and continually unfolding.
My flesh.
My child.
My chaos.
My balance.
My ugliness.
Your body.
Your pain.
Your journey.
Our longing.
Our recognition.
To see all the photographs in I See Me, click here.