Shantaram Mahesh

Member of the Agence VU’ since 2017, he is an Indian photographer based in Bangalore, India.

Mahesh Shantarem has graduated in Computer Electronics but quickly offset his error of working as an engineer to study photography in Paris. He is established in Bangalore as a photographer since 2006. 

He has first developed his critical vision while working for weddings. He sees both his press requirements and more personal works as an opportunity to develop his own approach to describing India’s complex social system. Using sometimes acute humour, Mahesh Shantaram shows both India’s hopes and inner mechanisms and has taken weddings and political culture as his favourite themes. Using colour as his principal tool, his work is always a critical approach to what seems to be caricatures.

In 2015, the British Journal of Photography has identified Mahesh Shantaram as a “One to Watch”. His works are regularly exhibited in international festivals (the World Photography Festival in the United Kingdom, Photoquai in France, PhotoPhnomPehn in Cambodia, Unseen Photo Fair in the Netherlands, GextoPhoto in Spain, the Addis Photo Festival in Ethiopia, the Chobi Mela Festival of Photography in Bangladesh and Photo Katmandou in Nepal).