Biography
Debmalya Ray Choudhuri (b. Kolkata; he/they) is a nonbinary, self-taught photographer from India, based between New York and Calcutta.
Rooted in a diaristic practice, their work spans photography, performance, and text. It navigates the intersections of trauma and resilience, while engaging with broader questions of gender, identity, migration, and memory.
Following the loss of a lover to suicide, art became a means of processing grief and confronting the stigma surrounding suicide, addiction, and mental illness. What began as an escape from chaos gradually evolved into a search for intimacy — an attempt to connect deeply, both physically and emotionally, with people and spaces, and to hold on to moments that feel raw, tender, and honest. These encounters became a way to understand the self through the other and to question the complexities of the human condition.
Against a backdrop of rising right-wing populism and selective empathy, both in India and in their adopted home in the United States, their practice turns towards community and kinship. Through encounters with friends and strangers, the author explores how people navigate grief, desire, longing, and vulnerability, and how interpersonal relationships become spaces of resistance and care. Their work reflects on what it means to exist as queer in an increasingly fragmented sociopolitical landscape.
Grounded in care and collaboration, their storytelling challenges assumptions surrounding identity, representation, and image-making. The boundaries between photograph
Their work is held in private collections in New York and Paris.
Select shows/interviews/publications/displays:
Concept Album: Photography in Writing and Curation Online Symposium, ICP, New York (Oct 2026)
Photoworks UK,October-Nov 2026
Kranj Photo Festival, Aug-Sept 2026
International Photography Festival Association (IPFA) Solo Exhibition Award, Photoworks Festival, UK
Griffin Museum of Photography, MA, USA, Arnold Newman Prize 2025 exhibition (Dec 2025-Jan 2026)
Behind the Curtain: Vulnerabilities Exposed: CENTER Santa Fe Award winners exhibition, CENTER, Santa Fe, Oct 24th-Dec 5th,2025
"Reflecting The Real "- Photo Museum Ireland, July -August 2025
Winner of The Center Award : “Personal Award” 2025, CENTER Santa Fe , juried by Pauline Vermare (Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum)
Cluster Photography Fair, London (April 2025)
Granta Magazine, Issue 168: Significant Other (Summer 2024)
Rotterdam Photo Festival, part of Rotterdam Art Week, Netherlands (1st-4th February 2024)
Projection night, as part of Der-Greif collective, Les Rencontres des Arles (July 2023)
“Divine Queerness: Forms and Tools of Healing”, the LGBT Center, NYC, and Enfoco Inc (June-September 2023)
Louis Roederer Discovery Award, Les Rencontres d’Arles 2022,curated by Dr. Taous R. Dahmani (July- August 2022)
The Portrait Photographer’s Manual, Thames and Hudson (Book by Max Ferguson and Cian Oba-Smith), 2023
Trigger Journal, guest edited by Susan Meiselas, Magnum Photos for Fotomuseum Antwerp, 2022
”Photography kept me alive”, Elephant Magazine (Words by Diane Smyth, curator, writer and editor),2022
Angkor Photo Festival, Cambodia ,2020
”Photography as a way of living”, British Journal of Photography, 2018
For an extended CV/exhibitions/features list, please email.
Email for work/assignment/commissions:debmalya.roychoudhuri@gmail.com