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UNBECOMING Kalliope Amorphous reflects on self-portraiture and feminine representation, revealing a practice shaped by transformation, instinct and the possibilities that emerge when likeness begins to shift. UNBECOMING Kalliope Amorphous reflects on self-portraiture and feminine representation, revealing a practice shaped by transformation, instinct and the possibilities that emerge when likeness begins to shift. September 27, 2026 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Kalliope Amorphous INTERVIEW Melanie Meggs Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE To unbecome describes a threshold rather than a loss, a space between presence and absence that Kalliope Amorphous returns to often in her thinking about the self. Reflection, distortion, repetition, and entropy function in her work as both subject and tool, making images that resist fixed representation in favor of something she describes as fluid and fragmented, open to ongoing interpretation rather than settled into a single meaning. Kalliope begins her photographs within a recognizable visual language of feminine beauty, but she has been clear that she is not interested in idealizing the female face. Instead, she allows that visual language to unravel until the portrait becomes psychologically expressive, extending beauty beyond its conventional associations with coherence and control. This is presented not as a rejection of beauty but as an extension of it, a way of letting a familiar visual register carry more than it is usually asked to carry. Working repeatedly with her own image, she treats self-portraiture as a form of material experimentation. Although many of her photographs are self-portraits, she does not consider them necessarily autobiographical, and is drawn instead to the point where individual experience opens onto broader questions of archetype, mortality, and time. The still image becomes a generative space in which these ideas can remain unresolved, returning the viewer to the photograph not for a fixed answer, but for an encounter that continues to shift. Kalliope creates these self-portraits entirely in camera using a hand-built reflective chamber constructed from several types of reflective polyester film. The process is physical and optical. Distortion occurs before the photograph is fixed, so the final image records a real encounter between body, reflection, light and material. Instability is built into the conditions of their making. This is a considered method, developed and refined over two decades, and it reflects a clear artistic conviction. As she describes it, she is fascinated by the moment a portrait begins to open into something else, when familiar features are reconfigured rather than erased, remaining recognizable even as they grow unfamiliar. The photographs are not evidence of a face coming apart. They are evidence of a face becoming newly expressive. Her stated influences run from Francis Bacon’s distortions to the symbolic and mythological aesthetic of the Pre-Raphaelites, while her practice is also informed by Butoh and other performance traditions concerned with embodiment and transformation. Across these references, Kalliope locates herself deliberately in the space between photography and painting, treating her images as a canvas for interpretation instead of a fixed statement. She has described being drawn, throughout her work, to themes of mortality, duality, transformation, fragility, and longing, and to spiritual and mythological imagery as a way of exploring grief, consciousness, and transcendence. These are not incidental interests. They are the throughline of a practice she describes as returning to the same questions from many directions. “Women have historically been expected to be beautiful in front of a camera. The face is supposed to remain pleasing and legible. Even when a portrait is intended to be strong or complex, there can still be that underlying expectation that the woman stays visually desirable. I wanted to see what happened if I removed that obligation without removing the actual femininity itself. I like to see these figures be adorned, sensual, glamorous, or beautiful while also becoming grotesque, distorted, confrontational, or strange. I want to get the photograph to the point where those states don’t cancel one another out.” IN CONVERSATION WITH KALLIOPE AMORPHOUS You are a self-taught artist and have developed your practice over two decades. Before we arrive at Unbecoming, I would like to go back to the beginning. What first compelled you to make photographs, and at what point did photography stop being something you were interested in and become the language through which you understood yourself as an artist? I have always been a very imaginative visual thinker, so photography immediately felt like the easiest way for me translate all my ideas into something tangible. From my very first experimental photograph, I was fascinated by the emotional life I could capture. I saw that I could convey things like longing, mystery, sadness, and hope by using a camera in the same way a painter conveys these states using a brush. Because of that, I’m not sure there was ever a distinct moment when photography stopped being something I was interested in and became a language. From my earliest photographs, the camera felt like it was less about recording what was in front of me and more about making an interior experience visible. Self-portraiture has become central to your practice, although you make an important distinction between a self-portrait and an autobiographical photograph. When did you first begin placing yourself in front of the camera, and what did using your own body make possible that photographing another person could not? I began making self-portraits from the very beginning for practical reasons. I was always there and available as the subject. So, if the muses struck at 4am, I didn’t have to wait to start creating. I am solitary by nature, and all of my creative worlds have always been very self-contained, so it felt natural to just start playing all of the roles myself. It’s also very liberating being on both sides of the camera. I don’t have to explain an idea to another person and then direct them to convey it. I can respond intuitively and physically to what is happening as I make the image. Using my own body collapses that distance between the person imagining the photograph and the person inside it. I really can’t imagine working any other way at this point. You write that a faithful likeness cannot communicate the psychological and emotional states that interest you. That challenges one of portraitures' oldest assumptions, that resemblance might somehow bring us closer to a person. What do you think conventional likeness fails to tell us, and what becomes visible only after the face begins to lose its familiar form? I think that a faithful likeness can tell us an enormous amount about a person, but it is describing a certain kind of reality. I’m really interested in what a face can’t necessarily show us when it is functioning primarily as something we easily recognize. Once the face begins to lose that familiar form, some of the automatic ways of reading it fall away. It can become something more ambiguous: a memory, an apparition, an emotional state, an archetype, or something that we really can’t place at all. Distortion isn’t a way of concealing the subject but of opening up the image. When the familiar signposts that describe a person accurately disappear, other kinds of information can come out. I like that threshold where someone is still present, but their likeness is no longer the only thing the photograph is showing us. Memory works this way too, because we rarely remember with total visual accuracy. We tend to remember with more poetry. The camera can remember with more poetry too. Atmosphere and presence can feel just as important as what someone looked like. I like to imagine what the spirit or soul might look like. What interests me technically is that these images are created entirely in camera through a reflective chamber you built yourself, rather than through digital manipulation afterward. Could you take us inside that process? (How did you develop the chamber, what materials did you experiment with, and how much control do you actually have once you begin photographing? I am also interested in failure here. Does it happen? Are the most important images the result of something you deliberately construct, or do they often emerge when the material behaves in ways you could not anticipate?) I’ve been working with different types of polyester film and reflective materials since 2012, when I first made my Glass Houses series. I’ve been through countless configurations and experiments with these materials over the years. Eventually, I built a reflective chamber that allows me to easily switch the different materials out. It acts almost like a stage set that I can reconfigure whenever I want to work with a different effect. It’s very difficult to have complete control over the process, but over the years I’ve learned how to influence what the materials do and anticipate some of the ways they will behave. In that sense, the process has felt like mastering a musical instrument. At first, you are trying to figure out how to make it produce the sound you want. Eventually it becomes intuitive. Now it feels more like a partner I am dancing with instead of something I am trying to get to work for me. Failure happens constantly, but I don’t really consider it failure. Some images are the result of something I’ve deliberately done, and others are a complete surprise to me. Often I’ll see something happen that I couldn’t have anticipated, and that discovery gives me a new direction to chase. With all of the experimental techniques I work with, that element of surprise is always my favorite part. If everything were deliberately constructed, I don’t think the process would be nearly as exciting to me. I love processes that rely on a certain amount of unpredictability. Looking through the series, there seems to be a precise threshold at which the face is altered enough to become psychologically unfamiliar but not so completely that its human identity disappears. You have described being fascinated by the moment when a portrait begins to disintegrate and become something else. How do you recognize that moment while you are working? Is there a point at which distortion can go too far? What has to survive within the image for the photograph to remain a portrait? I see it pretty much by instinct. There isn’t a formula for how much of the face has to remain or how far I can push an image before it stops working, so it really depends on each individual image. I’m looking for that moment where there is still enough of a human presence for us to feel that someone is there. Distortion can absolutely go too far, although “too far” is different for every photograph. Sometimes a suggestion of a feature or a gesture is enough to hold the image together. Other times, something can collapse too far into abstraction or absurdity. I always want to get as close to the edge as I can without losing the psychological presence of the figure. What has to survive for me more than likeness itself is the feeling of presence and that there is still someone in there. They are still portraits because, however altered or strange the figure becomes, there is still a sense of encountering another presence. With all of the experimental techniques I work with, that element of surprise is always my favorite part. The title Unbecoming contains several possible meanings. It can imply dismantling an identity, rejecting the demand to become a particular kind of person, or existing in a transitional state between what one has been and what one might become. What does the word mean to you, and what was happening conceptually in the work when you realised that this was its title? The title actually began when I was thinking about how the word “unbecoming” is used as an insult. I was looking at some of the more monstrous photographs I had made and thinking about the ways women are expected to present themselves, and how quickly a woman can be described as unbecoming when she steps outside of expectations. I liked the idea of taking a word associated with being unattractive or somehow failing at femininity and using it to describe these images in which I was deliberately allowing myself to become grotesque and strange. As the series developed the word opened up for me. I started thinking about “unbecoming” more literally: the opposite of becoming, a process of undoing or dismantling. Or, unbecoming one thing to become something else. Then, I started thinking about the spiritual concepts of ego death. So, the title eventually took on several meanings. There is the unbecoming woman and then there is the act of unbecoming itself. What began as kind of a joke or provocation became a larger way of understanding what was happening in this process. Throughout a lifetime of making photographs, there are often people who quietly change the course of our journey. They introduce new ideas, challenge our thinking, open unexpected doors, or simply encourage us to trust our own vision. Looking back, who have been those people for you, and how did they influence not only your photography, but the way you see the world? This is always a difficult question for me because, truthfully, I have had a very solitary journey as an artist. There haven’t been people behind the scenes opening doors for me, mentoring me, or encouraging me. I didn’t have family or any support systems. There were periods of my younger life where I was fighting for basic survival while also trying to carve out a creative life. I think that absence and isolation shaped my work very deeply. I learned very early to follow my own curiosity and to trust my instincts even when there was no external validation for what I was making. There have certainly been artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers whose work has expanded the way I understand what art can do, but that feels different to me from having people who personally changed the course of my journey. My creative life is something I fought very hard to build and I did it without any support at all. If someone were sitting across from you today at the beginning of their photographic journey, what guidance would you offer as they start to discover their own way of seeing and making photographs? First, I would say feel free to break all the rules. Learn them if they are useful to you, but don’t mistake them for requirements. Some of the most interesting things I have made came from doing something I probably wasn’t supposed to do with a camera. If an accident happens that interests you, follow it and see where it leads. You have to find what excites you and keep following it. Your way of seeing is the one thing nobody else can teach you and refining that will always feel much more interesting than learning how to make photographs that look like everyone else’s. The best question you can keep asking yourself is, “I wonder what would happen if I tried this?” Your work is so dependent on reflection, material experimentation and the controlled unpredictability of light. What does your studio look and feel like when you are making these photographs, and how much does that physical environment shape the images that emerge? My studio is a cross between a theater stage and a ritual room. It’s filled with reflective materials, fabrics, lights, strange objects, and things I’ve collected because I thought they might do something interesting in front of a camera. Everything gets moved or reconfigured depending on what I’m working on. I tend to work in a very immersive way, often for hours at a time, and the rest of the world disappears when I’m in there. I get lost in music while I am working. I can’t imagine working without it. The physical environment shapes the photographs completely because I’m not creating these effects afterward. Almost everything has to happen there, between my body, the camera, the light, and the materials. I can construct the conditions for something to happen, but I can’t entirely determine what will happen. That’s where the ritual aspect comes in for me. I’m creating a space in which I can invite transformation, but I still must be receptive to whatever might appear. It has always felt very ritualistic to me. When you think about the future of your practice, what are the new questions or directions that excite you? Are there creative risks you hope to take, or new communities you want to engage through your work in the years ahead? What excites me most is not knowing exactly where the work is ever headed. Every big shift has come from following something that surprised me rather than deciding in advance that I was going to do something new. Recently, after so many years of working primarily with self-portraiture, I unexpectedly began making work from photographs I took of musicians Tori Amos and Florence Welch. Through experimental processes involving light, movement, and optical distortion, those photographs have evolved into something different from conventional portraiture. That work has opened up a new set of questions for me about the idea of the muse, and what can happen when my visual language encounters someone other than myself. That feels like a big creative change for me because my practice has been mostly self contained for decades. I’m interested in what happens when the visual language I’ve developed through self-portraiture is applied to another person, particularly women who have created such distinctive artistic worlds of their own. It has opened up another creative language I hadn’t anticipated. Mostly, I want to keep taking risks that make me slightly unsure of what I’m doing. The moment I know exactly how an image is going to turn out, I get bored. The thrill of discovery is still the reason I make photographs. While photography has clearly been a lifelong companion, we all have other passions that shape who we are. Beyond making photographs, what occupies your heart and mind? What inspires you, challenges you, brings you peace, or simply makes you happy? How do these parts of your life influence the artist you become each time you pick up the camera? I have another creative life as a professional perfumer where I make unusual fragrances under my brand Amorphous Perfume. I’ve been a perfumer for nearly twenty years. Perfume and photography are very creatively similar for me. Both allow me to create atmosphere and communicate things that can be very difficult to put into words. Scent is especially connected to memory, and I’m fascinated by how something completely invisible can suddenly transport you somewhere else or bring back an emotional experience. To me, perfume and photography are both ways to capture the invisible. Music is also very important to me. I come from a very musical family, and music has probably shaped my imagination more than any form of visual art has. I’ve always been musically inclined myself. When I’m not working on photography or perfume, I spend a lot of time working with piano and voice, and more recently experimenting with the shruti box and harmomium. In many ways, I feel like I’m returning to a part of myself that I didn’t have the opportunity to fully develop earlier in my life. It feels important to give myself the space to explore it now. I also run Midcentury Archive, a long-term archival and research project centered on Dr. Martha Nickerson and the thousands of Kodachrome slides and vernacular photographs she left behind. I came into possession of the collection after she passed away, and I’ve spent years researching her history while preserving and documenting this amazing visual record of her life and travels. It’s felt very emotional and meaningful for me to take responsibility for someone else’s visual history and making sure it isn’t lost. All of these interests eventually find their way into my photographs, even when I’m not consciously putting them there. I don’t experience photography as something separate from the rest of my life. Everything I love, notice, collect, listen to, remember, or become obsessed with eventually shows up with me when I pick up a camera. VIEW KALLIOPE'S PORTFOLIO WEBSITE INSTAGRAM read more interviews >>> UNBECOMING Kalliope Amorphous reflects on self-portraiture and feminine representation, revealing a practice shaped by transformation, instinct and the possibilities that emerge when likeness begins to shift. CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE DO Culture lives where art and community meet, and in this space Alejandro Dávila’s photographs reveal the unseen labor and devotion that sustain creation. ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. IT STARTED AS LIGHT…ENDED IN SHIVERS… Between intimacy and estrangement, Anton Bou’s photographs wander — restless fragments of light and shadow, mapping the fragile terrain where self unravels into sensation. WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. DIPTYCH DIALOGUES Through the beautiful language of diptychs, Taiwanese photographer Jay Hsu invites us into a world where quiet images speak of memory, resilience, and hope. UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. THE PULSE OF THE STREET Moments vanish, yet Suvam Saha holds them still — the pulse of India’s streets captured in fragments of life that will never repeat. WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity.

Talking to photographers from around the world, offering an insight into their photographic journey to inspire us all. WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. INTERVIEW UNBECOMING Kalliope Amorphous reflects on self-portraiture and feminine representation, revealing a practice shaped by transformation, instinct and the possibilities that emerge when likeness begins to shift. INTERVIEW CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. INTERVIEW THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. INTERVIEW WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. INTERVIEW THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. INTERVIEW MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. INTERVIEW THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. INTERVIEW WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. INTERVIEW GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. INTERVIEW WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. INTERVIEW WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE DO Culture lives where art and community meet, and in this space Alejandro Dávila’s photographs reveal the unseen labor and devotion that sustain creation. INTERVIEW ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. INTERVIEW THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. INTERVIEW IT STARTED AS LIGHT…ENDED IN SHIVERS… Between intimacy and estrangement, Anton Bou’s photographs wander — restless fragments of light and shadow, mapping the fragile terrain where self unravels into sensation. INTERVIEW WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. INTERVIEW DIPTYCH DIALOGUES Through the beautiful language of diptychs, Taiwanese photographer Jay Hsu invites us into a world where quiet images speak of memory, resilience, and hope. INTERVIEW UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. INTERVIEW THE PULSE OF THE STREET Moments vanish, yet Suvam Saha holds them still — the pulse of India’s streets captured in fragments of life that will never repeat. INTERVIEW WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. INTERVIEW CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. INTERVIEW STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. INTERVIEW PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. INTERVIEW POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. INTERVIEW QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. INTERVIEW TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity.

We are on a mission to discover new photographers, and the most pictorial and interesting photo stories out there. SPOTLIGHT / KALLIOPE AMORPHOUS Providence UNITED STATES AARON RUBINO ABBIE BRIGGS ABDULLA SHINOSE CK ABHAY PATEL ABHISHEK SINGH ABIR CHOUDHURY ADAM SINCLAIR ADESH GAUR ADRIAN PELEGRIN ADRIAN TAN ADRIAN WHEAR AGATA LO MONACO AHMET HOJAMYRADOV AJ BERNSTEIN ALAN THEXTON ALEJANDRO DAVILA ALESSANDRO GIUGNI ALEX FRAYNE ALEX GOTTFRIED BONDER ALEX RUTHERFORD ALEXANDRA AVLONITIS ALEXANDROS ZILOS ALEXEY STRECHEN ALICIA HABER AMY HOROWITZ GET ON THE LIST © Ypatia Kornarou

The Pictorial List is a global online magazine exploring the beauty and complexity of all things photography. @ the Pictorial Foundation artspace: OCULA OBSCURA September 12 — November 1, 2026 A Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation grant brings an immersive photographic experience to Newburgh, bringing together ten accomplished artists and leaders in camera obscura and pinhole photography. UNBECOMING Kalliope Amorphous reflects on self-portraiture and feminine representation, revealing a practice shaped by transformation, instinct and the possibilities that emerge when likeness begins to shift. Latest features PICTORIAL STORY THE LIFE WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN Ten years after first seeing Larung Gar, Jing Wei returns to a changed mountain, finding continuity in faith, memory and the lives held within it. INTERVIEW CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. PICTORIAL STORY PROSCENIUM GHOSTS Said Manseur honors these young actors, their courage, and the unseen work they give to keep theater alive against the odds. INTERVIEW THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. INTERVIEW WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. PICTORIAL STORY REGINA: BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AND DREAMS A boarding school room becomes the frame for Cleopatra Joint’s portrait of ambition, instability, and a young woman’s search for freedom. PICTORIAL STORY LIFE ALONG THE RIVER Along the Hooghly, Shubhodeep Roy photographs Kolkata through faith, labour and memory, revealing a city shaped by water, inheritance and shared life. PICTORIAL STORY A HOME OF MEMORIES AND THE PRESENT Davide Santangelo returns to his family home by moonlight, tracing how absence, memory, and love continue to live within place, objects, and atmosphere after loss. PICTORIAL STORY THE PULL OF THE EARTH This is more than a record of rural Bengal. It looks at the bond between Sayan Biswas and the place that shaped him, even after distance has changed that relationship. INTERVIEW THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. BOOK TÜRKIYE Rpnunyez offers a thoughtful portrait of a country shaped by history, culture, landscape, architecture, and everyday life. BOOK BETWEEN SEA AND SKY Through walking and flight, Massimo Lupidi reveals Cinque Terre as a landscape shaped by attention, endurance, and the intimate bond between land and human life. INTERVIEW MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. INTERVIEW THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. PICTORIAL STORY ARE THOSE WINDS Along Istanbul’s northern edge, Ci Demi photographs the last water buffalo herders as they keep working, remembering, and staying put while the city closes in. TRANSPARENT Memory, grief and the family archive converge in William Josephs Radford’s work, questioning how photographs shape what we remember and what remains after someone is gone. New York, New York! PICTORIAL STORY NYC SUBWAY RIDERS BEFORE THE INVASTION OF SMARTPHONES Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs reveal a vanished intimacy. INTERVIEW FABRIC OF NEW YORK VISUALS Elle Clarke lives NYC — snapping its heart and hustle with her smartphone, one real city moment at a time! INTERVIEW NOD OF RECOGNITION B Jane Levine’s portraits give a playful wink — inviting a nod of recognition to the hidden stories we all carry inside. INTERVIEW NEW YORK IMPROVISATIONS Fast-moving, off-kilter, witty, raw and classic film noir define Bill Lacey's photography. PICTORIAL STORY MERMAID MAGIC AJ Bernstein captures the magic of the Mermaid Parade—where fantasy, freedom, and community come together in a sea of color and joy. INTERVIEW GOTHAM MEMORIES Jeff Rothstein clicks, time unfolds — capturing the heart of the city in timeless frames, from 1969 to today. PICTORIAL STORY TAKING THE PLUNGE Carol Dronsfield takes the plunge with the Coney Island’s Polar Bears, capturing the chill, the thrill, and the heart. INTERVIEW THE AUTHENTIC GAZE Amy Horowitz says “Don’t Smile”— and in doing so, captures the real and wonderfully unscripted faces of New York City. VOLUME ONE- NEW YORK BUY NOW join the Pictorial Community >>> Follow us on Instagram #thepictoriallist @thepictorial.list Load More KOLKATA MONSOON For more than a decade, Abir Choudhury has spent the rains outdoors in Kolkata, photographing what four months of water does to the city he grew up in. Interviews you may have missed REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE Camille J. Wheeler documents Austin's streets, with a particular focus on its homeless community. COMEDIANS Steve Best documents the British comedy scene, backstage and on stage, the highs and lows, and the joy of being a comedian. QUARANTINE IN QUEENS Neil Kramer's humorous and compassionate lockdown diary has gone viral. ENROUTE TO THE PINES Robert Sherman shares his documentary series about drag queens celebrating the 'Invasion of the Pines'. SERVICE INTERRUPTION Wojciech Karlinski documented Poland train stations during the pandemic, highlighting their formal and aesthetic side. VOICES OF THE NILE Voices of the Nile by Bastien Massa and Arthur Larie is a project documenting the relationship of Ethiopians with the Blue Nile. BREAKS FROM REALITY The magic only dreams are made of become reality for viewers as they engage in the poetic imagery of Mariëtte Aernoudts. BEYOND THE STORY Through her documentary photography, Christina Simons is compelled to tell the stories of those who are unable to do so themselves. © Russell Cobb Media Partners

KALLIOPE AMORPHOUS I am an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice, developed over the past two decades, explores themes of identity and transformation. Working primarily in photography and self-portraiture, I create images that examine states of transition. My photographs use self-built reflective environments and other experimental processes to investigate archetypes, memory, and the boundaries of the self. I am a self-taught artist and have exhibited and published internationally, with works held in private collections throughout the United States and abroad. My practice has developed through an ongoing interest in experimental in-camera techniques and the creation of a distinct visual language. Alongside my visual art practice, I am the founder and perfumer behind Amorphous Perfume, an independent fragrance house known for atmospheric, narrative-driven fragrances. I am also the founder and curator of the Midcentury Archive, an ongoing project dedicated to the preservation and publication of vernacular and mid-century photography. LOCATION Providence UNITED STATES CAMERA/S Canon 90D WEBSITE https://www.kalliopeamorphous.com/ @KALLIAMORPHOUS

WILLIAM JOSEPHS RADFORD I was born in rural Andalucía to British parents, and that mix of cultures has shaped how I see the world and the themes I explore in my work — identity, beauty, and the expectations society places on both. My photography often gravitates toward subjects that some might see as difficult or provocative. I’m drawn to finding beauty in unexpected places and using symbols — like condoms, crucifixes, or cigarettes — to reflect on ideas around sexuality, spirituality, vice, and cultural contradictions. Color has always been central to my work: I’ve used rich, saturated palettes to create images that are both visually striking and layered with meaning. I studied fine art photography at the University of Gloucestershire, and over the years I’ve developed several bodies of work, including Character Building, Deflowered, Cherry Blossom, and Semi-Detached. My work has appeared in publications like Divide Magazine, Al-Tiba9, Contemporary Art Curator, and F-Stop Magazine, and I’ve been fortunate to exhibit across Europe and beyond, in cities such as Paris, Berlin, Florence, Barcelona, and Bangkok. LOCATION Cheltenham UNITED KINGDOM CAMERA/S Nikon D7200 WEBSITE https://josephsradford.com/ @JOSEPHSRADFORD FEATURES // Transparent

Presenting the work of visual storytellers from around the world. REGINA: BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AND DREAMS A boarding school room becomes the frame for Cleopatra Joint’s portrait of ambition, instability, and a young woman’s search for freedom. PICTORIAL STORY TRANSPARENT Memory, grief and the family archive converge in William Josephs Radford’s work, questioning how photographs shape what we remember and what remains after someone is gone. PICTORIAL STORY KOLKATA MONSOON For more than a decade, Abir Choudhury has spent the rains outdoors in Kolkata, photographing what four months of water does to the city he grew up in. PICTORIAL STORY THE LIFE WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN Ten years after first seeing Larung Gar, Jing Wei returns to a changed mountain, finding continuity in faith, memory and the lives held within it. PICTORIAL STORY PROSCENIUM GHOSTS Said Manseur honors these young actors, their courage, and the unseen work they give to keep theatre alive against the odds. PICTORIAL STORY REGINA: BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AND DREAMS A boarding school room becomes the frame for Cleopatra Joint’s portrait of ambition, instability, and a young woman’s search for freedom. PICTORIAL STORY LIFE ALONG THE RIVER Along the Hooghly, Shubhodeep Roy photographs Kolkata through faith, labour and memory, revealing a city shaped by water, inheritance and shared life. PICTORIAL STORY A HOME OF MEMORIES AND THE PRESENT Davide Santangelo returns to his family home by moonlight, tracing how absence, memory, and love continue to live within place, objects, and atmosphere after loss. PICTORIAL STORY THE PULL OF THE EARTH This is more than a record of rural Bengal. It looks at the bond between Sayan Biswas and the place that shaped him, even after distance has changed that relationship. PICTORIAL STORY ARE THOSE WINDS Along Istanbul’s northern edge, Ci Demi photographs the last water buffalo herders as they keep working, remembering, and staying put while the city closes in. PICTORIAL STORY COLORS OF HÜZÜN Through fragments and gestures, Pedro Vidal traces Istanbul as shared melancholy lingers in everyday life, the city unfolding slowly and refusing to settle into a single, definitive understanding. PICTORIAL STORY OUT OF PLAY An exploration of abandoned interiors in which Marco Lugli examines how objects, light, and space carry memory beyond human presence, establishing absence as a condition of material continuity rather than loss. PICTORIAL STORY REIMAGINING TALIESIN Form gives way to flux in Amy Newton-McConnel’s photographs, where architecture unfolds as a field of shifting relations and perception moves with light, geometry, and time. PICTORIAL STORY WHERE THE MUSIC BEGINS Before the strings, Jeevan Akash Jayavarthanan leaves the movement of the street for the rhythm of the workshop, where time holds, hands work, and each moment forms what will later be heard. PICTORIAL STORY LAND, LABOR, AND THE GOLDEN FIBER In West Bengal’s jute fields, Rajesh Dhar examines the systems of land and labor, tracing how a single material sustains communities and informs a changing ecological future. PICTORIAL STORY WITH GRATITUDE AND DEVOTION A quiet and intimate account of devotion in Zaraza, Venezuela, Rafael Ayala Páez reflects on faith, memory, and community through photographs and words that honor the enduring power of small gestures. PICTORIAL STORY SILVER AND BREATH Within this fragile space between looking and being seen, Eva Christina Nielsen has developed a practice that is both restrained and deeply attentive. PICTORIAL STORY RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. PICTORIAL STORY DELTA DUSK John Agather weaves image and text into a single current, tracing how music, memory, and daily life continue to move through the Mississippi Delta. PICTORIAL STORY SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. PICTORIAL STORY SOLITUDE UNDER A TECHNIFIED SUN Tracing the space between movement and stillness, Héctor Morón reveals a city that persists as human presence slips by. PICTORIAL STORY 4320 MINUTES WITHOUT COLOR Moving between photography and narration, Mohammed Nahi traces a period in which sight could no longer be assumed as reliable, and attention shifted toward memory and duration. PICTORIAL STORY THE PAINTED VILLAGE OF LABANDHAR Anjan Ghosh’s photographs carry us to Labandhar, where painting becomes language, tradition stays present, and art grows through shared ground. PICTORIAL STORY ORDINARY GRIEF What endures when everything else is uncertain? Through photography, Parisa Azadi asks us to see Iran not as story, but as feeling. PICTORIAL STORY THE EVERYMAN Eva Mallis uncovers the quiet strength of overlooked lives, capturing everyday encounters in Mumbai’s industrial districts as intimate portraits of labor and resilience. PICTORIAL STORY IN BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTER In Cairo’s City of the Dead, families carve out ordinary lives among centuries of tombs — Paola Ferrarotti traces the fragile line between memory and survival.

PICTORIAL STORY TRANSPARENT Memory, grief and the family archive converge in William Josephs Radford’s work, questioning how photographs shape what we remember and what remains after someone is gone. September 20, 2026 PICTORIAL STORY PHOTOGRAPHY William Josephs Radford WORDS William Josephs Radford and Melanie Meggs SHARE Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link “Have you ever remembered a person, a place, or a moment, only to later realise that what you remember is actually a photograph? A single image can become so deeply connected to our memories that, over time, it becomes difficult to separate the photograph from the experience itself. We begin to question whether we truly remember the moment, or whether we only remember the image that represents it.” - William Josephs Radford This uncertainty sits at the centre of Transparent, the fifth and final project in William Josephs Radford’s series examining grief. Born in Marbella, Spain, and raised in the rural countryside of Andalucía, the British-Spanish photographer now works from Cheltenham in the United Kingdom. Across his practice, William approaches subjects including life, death, sex, addiction, identity and grief through constructed photographic processes, often using long exposure, light painting, colour gels and lens masking to produce much of the image within the camera. With Transparent, the starting point was more private. After the death of his father, William returned to his family albums and began looking through photographs of his childhood. “After my father died, I looked through our family photo albums. I was surprised by how few photographs included him. This made me question how present he really was during my childhood. Out of thousands of family photos, I found him in only a small number of them, mostly taken on special occasions like birthdays and holidays.” The discovery opened a more difficult question. If the family archive contained so little photographic evidence of his father, what did that absence say about memory, presence and the way a life becomes represented after someone has died? Photography is often understood as evidence that something happened. Someone stood somewhere at a particular moment and the camera registered their presence. Family photography depends heavily upon this assumption. The image becomes part of the record through which a family later understands itself. Transparent unsettles that certainty. Over six months, William carefully removed his father from selected family photographs. Yet the project is more complicated than an act of erasure. He reconstructs the visual information behind the missing figure, creating versions of these spaces as though his father had never occupied them at all. A doorway continues behind the body that once interrupted it. A beach remains without the person who once stood within the landscape. Parts of rooms are rebuilt. The image closes around the absence. The result is something closer to counterfactual photography. These photographs depict circumstances that appear entirely plausible but were never actually photographed. They present an alternative version of family history in which the surrounding world remains intact while one person has been removed from it. The question therefore becomes larger than disappearance. William asks what kind of reality is produced once an absence has been made visually complete. Family photographs have never been neutral records. Every archive is shaped by decisions, whether deliberate or accidental. Someone chooses when to raise the camera. Someone remains behind it. Certain events are photographed repeatedly while long periods of ordinary life may leave almost no visual trace. Images are lost, discarded, damaged or kept. What survives gradually comes to represent what happened. William’s discovery that his father appeared predominantly in photographs made during birthdays and holidays exposes this selectivity. An archive does not necessarily measure how present someone was within a life. It records the moments in which photography itself became present. By intervening in these photographs, William takes that instability further. He produces an alternative image and allows it to exist with the original. The work begins to move between remembrance and fabrication, between a documented past and one that has been reconstructed after the fact. Once his father disappears, the spaces begin to take on greater significance. In the original photographs, environments may have functioned only as backgrounds. Following William’s intervention, they become the surviving subjects. The viewer begins to look differently at the ordinary architecture of family life, at walls, furniture, landscapes and domestic spaces that have outlasted the person whose presence once gave the image much of its meaning. There is something precise in this shift. Grief often involves confronting the persistence of the material world. Places remain. Objects remain. Familiar environments continue to exist despite the absence of the person through whom they were once understood. William extends this idea through the final physical form of the work. The altered photographs become lenticular prints, causing the image to change according to the viewer’s position. Presence and absence cannot be encountered from a single fixed point. The viewer must move, and with that movement the photograph changes. The process gives physical form to the way memory alters over time. Details sharpen, recede or disappear. What once seemed certain can be revised by distance, later knowledge or the simple passage of years. The photograph, like memory, refuses to remain fixed. © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford © William Josephs Radford Transparent marks the final chapter of William Josephs Radford’s exploration of grief, corresponding with acceptance. The acceptance presented here is not a resolution in which loss is made complete or the past becomes easier to understand. Instead, William accepts that memory can remain uncertain. In altering his family archive, William does not simply remove a person from the past. He reveals how photographs participate in constructing that past in the first place. What appears to be evidence can become interpretation. What appears to be remembered may have been learned through an image. An empty room can still carry the shape of someone who is no longer there. Transparent ultimately asks us to consider what remains when a photograph can no longer be relied upon to tell us exactly what happened. Perhaps memory never could either. view William's portfolio website instagram The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author/s and are not necessarily shared by The Pictorial List. read more stories >>> TRANSPARENT Memory, grief and the family archive converge in William Josephs Radford’s work, questioning how photographs shape what we remember and what remains after someone is gone. KOLKATA MONSOON For more than a decade, Abir Choudhury has spent the rains outdoors in Kolkata, photographing what four months of water does to the city he grew up in. THE LIFE WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN Ten years after first seeing Larung Gar, Jing Wei returns to a changed mountain, finding continuity in faith, memory and the lives held within it. PROSCENIUM GHOSTS Said Manseur honors these young actors, their courage, and the unseen work they give to keep theatre alive against the odds. REGINA: BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AND DREAMS A boarding school room becomes the frame for Cleopatra Joint’s portrait of ambition, instability, and a young woman’s search for freedom. LIFE ALONG THE RIVER Along the Hooghly, Shubhodeep Roy photographs Kolkata through faith, labour and memory, revealing a city shaped by water, inheritance and shared life. A HOME OF MEMORIES AND THE PRESENT Davide Santangelo returns to his family home by moonlight, tracing how absence, memory, and love continue to live within place, objects, and atmosphere after loss. THE PULL OF THE EARTH This is more than a record of rural Bengal. It looks at the bond between Sayan Biswas and the place that shaped him, even after distance has changed that relationship. ARE THOSE WINDS Along Istanbul’s northern edge, Ci Demi photographs the last water buffalo herders as they keep working, remembering, and staying put while the city closes in. COLORS OF HÜZÜN Through fragments and gestures, Pedro Vidal traces Istanbul as shared melancholy lingers in everyday life, the city unfolding slowly and refusing to settle into a single, definitive understanding. OUT OF PLAY An exploration of abandoned interiors in which Marco Lugli examines how objects, light, and space carry memory beyond human presence, establishing absence as a condition of material continuity rather than loss. REIMAGINING TALIESIN Form gives way to flux in Amy Newton-McConnel’s photographs, where architecture unfolds as a field of shifting relations and perception moves with light, geometry, and time. WHERE THE MUSIC BEGINS Before the strings, Jeevan Akash Jayavarthanan leaves the movement of the street for the rhythm of the workshop, where time holds, hands work, and each moment forms what will later be heard. LAND, LABOR, AND THE GOLDEN FIBER In West Bengal’s jute fields, Rajesh Dhar examines the systems of land and labor, tracing how a single material sustains communities and informs a changing ecological future. WITH GRATITUDE AND DEVOTION A quiet and intimate account of devotion in Zaraza, Venezuela, Rafael Ayala Páez reflects on faith, memory, and community through photographs and words that honor the enduring power of small gestures. SILVER AND BREATH Within this fragile space between looking and being seen, Eva Christina Nielsen has developed a practice that is both restrained and deeply attentive. RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. DELTA DUSK John Agather weaves image and text into a single current, tracing how music, memory, and daily life continue to move through the Mississippi Delta. SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. SOLITUDE UNDER A TECHNIFIED SUN Tracing the space between movement and stillness, Héctor Morón reveals a city that persists as human presence slips by. 4320 MINUTES WITHOUT COLOR Moving between photography and narration, Mohammed Nahi traces a period in which sight could no longer be assumed as reliable, and attention shifted toward memory and duration. THE PAINTED VILLAGE OF LABANDHAR Anjan Ghosh’s photographs carry us to Labandhar, where painting becomes language, tradition stays present, and art grows through shared ground. ORDINARY GRIEF What endures when everything else is uncertain? Through photography, Parisa Azadi asks us to see Iran not as story, but as feeling. THE EVERYMAN Eva Mallis uncovers the quiet strength of overlooked lives, capturing everyday encounters in Mumbai’s industrial districts as intimate portraits of labor and resilience. IN BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTER In Cairo’s City of the Dead, families carve out ordinary lives among centuries of tombs — Paola Ferrarotti traces the fragile line between memory and survival.

ABIR CHOUDHURY I began photographing in 2012, drawn to the small moments that shape everyday life. The streets became the place where I learned to observe more carefully, to notice gestures, expressions, movement, light and the relationships that form between people and their surroundings. My work is closely connected to Kolkata. I photograph its streets, traditions, labour, faith, festivals and changing urban landscape, often returning to the same places and subjects over time. I am interested in moments that are not staged, where different elements come together naturally within the frame. The work of Alex Webb has influenced the way I think about layering, colour and the possibility of holding several stories within one image. My photographs have been published in the National Geographic Your Shot Book, World Street Photography Book, Street Photography India: 100 Untold Stories and Urban International Photography Book. My work has also been recognised by HIPA, the Siena International Photo Awards and the Sigma Grand Contest. In 2022, I was named Photographer of the Year in the Street category at the Indian Photo Festival. LOCATION Konnagar INDIA CAMERA/S Nikon D7200, Nikon D750 @GORIBER_VANGOGH FEATURES // Kolkata Monsoon

PICTORIAL STORY KOLKATA MONSOON For more than a decade, Abir Choudhury has spent the rains outdoors in Kolkata, photographing what four months of water does to the city he grew up in. September 13, 2026 PICTORIAL STORY PHOTOGRAPHY Abir Choudhury WORDS Abir Choudhury and Melanie Meggs SHARE Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link Before the rain arrives, Kolkata has already begun to change. “For me, the arrival of the monsoon in Kolkata is something I can almost feel before the rain actually begins. The light changes first. The sky becomes darker and softer, the air feels heavier, and there is a particular stillness in the streets, as if the city is waiting for something to happen.” Abir Choudhury, who has been reading these signals for years, puts on his shoes and goes out. Then the petrichor arrives, the one that comes when rain meets ground that has been dry for weeks. Then thunder at a distance he cannot place, wind through the trees, the first drops of water pound the rooftops before they explode on the street. Shopkeepers pull down their covers. Umbrellas open. Traffic adjusts. Within minutes, a street he has walked a thousand times becomes unfamiliar, it has transformed. He does not go out with a picture in mind. “I often don't know exactly what photograph I am looking for,” he says. “I simply know that something is about to change, so I stay outside and observe.” Abir Choudhury is a documentary photographer based in Kolkata, the city he calls home and where he first picked up a camera in 2012. His work has travelled further than he expected, to the Siena International Photo Award and to the Indian Photo Festival, which named him Photographer of the Year in the street category in 2022. But the body of work he keeps returning to is the one that returns with the monsoon each year. Kolkata Monsoon did not begin as a project. It began as individual photographs, made because the rain was changing the city from its familiar shape. Buildings dissolved into mist. Traffic slowed. People moved differently, routes changed, and everything took longer. He photographed what caught his attention without yet knowing these separate moments would eventually belong to one another. Abir began to notice his photographs accumulating into something larger than the moments they recorded. Waterlogged streets, reflections, crowded shelters, moments of waiting. “That was when I decided to approach it as a sustained project rather than a collection of separate photographs,” he says. He would go back to the same streets, across the same weeks, year after year, and watch what the monsoon season did to them. The change that mattered most was in the subject. “Instead of trying to document the rain itself, I became interested in how people experience and adapt to the monsoon.” The weather became the setting rather than the story. Rain resurfaces the city. The ground stops taking light in and begins holding it, and for a few weeks Kolkata has a floor that answers back. “Puddles become mirrors,” he says. Colours saturate, then mute. Headlights and streetlights diffuse. Drops, mist and umbrellas build layers in the frame that he does not have to arrange. Movement is everywhere, people running, wheels through standing water, churning the water, and he chooses each time whether to freeze the movement or allow it to unfold. Standing still is central to his method. He finds a place that holds the possibility of a photograph, a reflection or a break in the cloud, and waits for someone to enter the space he has chosen. Sometimes for several minutes. Sometimes the photograph remains just out of reach. “I cannot control what will happen, but I can position myself, observe carefully, and be ready when the moment arrives.” The rain arrives across Kolkata everywhere at once. What the monsoon demands is another matter, and years of walking into it have settled that knowledge into the work without ever making it the subject. “I don't think the monsoon is experienced equally across Kolkata,” he says. The same rainfall, he explains, “can mean very different things depending on where you live, what kind of work you do, and how secure your living conditions are.” In neighbourhoods with poor drainage, water comes into homes and ruins what it touches. For vendors and rickshaw pullers and people paid by the day, a flooded street is a day of earnings gone. A short walk away, the identical rain is a delayed commute. “The physical distance between these experiences can sometimes be surprisingly small, yet the consequences are very different.” Difficulty is in the work without being what the work is made of. He knows how easily a season collapses into one feeling, and how generous rain is to whichever feeling a photographer chooses. “I try not to romanticise these conditions,” he says. Children play in the rain. Two strangers end up under one umbrella. Friends laugh their way across a crossing they cannot avoid. Families gather in whatever shelter is nearest. “A person struggling through floodwater can also laugh, play, help someone else, or find a moment of happiness. Those emotions are equally truthful.” He is firm about it. “I also wanted to avoid turning the people I photograph into symbols of suffering.” A single photograph can become a verdict, whatever the person holding the camera intended. A series has more room for contradiction, which may be the real reason Abir keeps going back. The season itself has begun to feel less reliable to him. Rain that comes late. Rain that arrives all at once and transforms a street within the hour. “I am careful not to claim that every change I have observed is directly caused by climate change,” he says, though walking the city in this season for so long has made him attentive to how quickly heavy rain finds the weak points in it. “These are not abstract environmental issues when you are walking through the streets and witnessing their consequences directly.” That has slowly widened what the project is for. It has become a record of how Kolkata and the people in it meet an environment they can no longer predict. “The monsoon is never exactly the same, and neither is the city,” he says. “By photographing it over time, I am documenting a changing Kolkata as much as I am documenting the rain.” He has no illusions about scale. A city of this size cannot be photographed and a season cannot be summarised. “I can preserve fragments," he says, and seems content with that. Streets change. Buildings come down. People move away. What he wants is for someone, years from now, to look at these photographs and know what it was like to walk through Kolkata in the monsoon season. Not only the water. The people in it, and the life continuing. There is one sentence he offers almost in passing that describes the whole undertaking. “Water has taught me to look twice.” © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury © Abir Choudhury Kolkata Monsoon is ultimately about return. Abir Choudhury goes back because the rain changes the terms of the city each year. Streets become crossings, routines shift, work slows, and people adapt. The photographs hold those changes without trying to explain them. They record difficulty beside pleasure and disruption beside familiarity, without reducing the monsoon season to one experience. Over time, the project has become about more than weather. It also reflects a growing awareness of climate change, environmental uncertainty, and the consequences carried into everyday life. It asks us to look twice, to see more, and to understand what changing conditions mean for the people living through them. Each monsoon gives Abir another chance to see what has altered, what remains, and what can still be found in the ordinary movement of the city. The rain returns, but never to exactly the same Kolkata, and Abir returns with it. view Abir Choudhury's portfolio instagram The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author/s and are not necessarily shared by The Pictorial List. read more stories >>> KOLKATA MONSOON For more than a decade, Abir Choudhury has spent the rains outdoors in Kolkata, photographing what four months of water does to the city he grew up in. THE LIFE WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN Ten years after first seeing Larung Gar, Jing Wei returns to a changed mountain, finding continuity in faith, memory and the lives held within it. PROSCENIUM GHOSTS Said Manseur honors these young actors, their courage, and the unseen work they give to keep theatre alive against the odds. REGINA: BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AND DREAMS A boarding school room becomes the frame for Cleopatra Joint’s portrait of ambition, instability, and a young woman’s search for freedom. LIFE ALONG THE RIVER Along the Hooghly, Shubhodeep Roy photographs Kolkata through faith, labour and memory, revealing a city shaped by water, inheritance and shared life. A HOME OF MEMORIES AND THE PRESENT Davide Santangelo returns to his family home by moonlight, tracing how absence, memory, and love continue to live within place, objects, and atmosphere after loss. THE PULL OF THE EARTH This is more than a record of rural Bengal. It looks at the bond between Sayan Biswas and the place that shaped him, even after distance has changed that relationship. ARE THOSE WINDS Along Istanbul’s northern edge, Ci Demi photographs the last water buffalo herders as they keep working, remembering, and staying put while the city closes in. COLORS OF HÜZÜN Through fragments and gestures, Pedro Vidal traces Istanbul as shared melancholy lingers in everyday life, the city unfolding slowly and refusing to settle into a single, definitive understanding. OUT OF PLAY An exploration of abandoned interiors in which Marco Lugli examines how objects, light, and space carry memory beyond human presence, establishing absence as a condition of material continuity rather than loss. REIMAGINING TALIESIN Form gives way to flux in Amy Newton-McConnel’s photographs, where architecture unfolds as a field of shifting relations and perception moves with light, geometry, and time. WHERE THE MUSIC BEGINS Before the strings, Jeevan Akash Jayavarthanan leaves the movement of the street for the rhythm of the workshop, where time holds, hands work, and each moment forms what will later be heard. LAND, LABOR, AND THE GOLDEN FIBER In West Bengal’s jute fields, Rajesh Dhar examines the systems of land and labor, tracing how a single material sustains communities and informs a changing ecological future. WITH GRATITUDE AND DEVOTION A quiet and intimate account of devotion in Zaraza, Venezuela, Rafael Ayala Páez reflects on faith, memory, and community through photographs and words that honor the enduring power of small gestures. SILVER AND BREATH Within this fragile space between looking and being seen, Eva Christina Nielsen has developed a practice that is both restrained and deeply attentive. RUPTURE REPAIR REMNANT In this reflection on rupture, Donna Bassin invites us to consider how grief settles into the body and the image, and how the slow work of witnessing becomes a form of repair. DELTA DUSK John Agather weaves image and text into a single current, tracing how music, memory, and daily life continue to move through the Mississippi Delta. SILENT BEAUTY Tamara Quadrelli photographs the world by slowing down inside it. There is no rush to explain what we are seeing. The pleasure comes from staying with it. SOLITUDE UNDER A TECHNIFIED SUN Tracing the space between movement and stillness, Héctor Morón reveals a city that persists as human presence slips by. 4320 MINUTES WITHOUT COLOR Moving between photography and narration, Mohammed Nahi traces a period in which sight could no longer be assumed as reliable, and attention shifted toward memory and duration. THE PAINTED VILLAGE OF LABANDHAR Anjan Ghosh’s photographs carry us to Labandhar, where painting becomes language, tradition stays present, and art grows through shared ground. ORDINARY GRIEF What endures when everything else is uncertain? Through photography, Parisa Azadi asks us to see Iran not as story, but as feeling. THE EVERYMAN Eva Mallis uncovers the quiet strength of overlooked lives, capturing everyday encounters in Mumbai’s industrial districts as intimate portraits of labor and resilience. IN BETWEEN LIFE AND AFTER In Cairo’s City of the Dead, families carve out ordinary lives among centuries of tombs — Paola Ferrarotti traces the fragile line between memory and survival. UNFIGURED Nasos Karabelas transforms the human body into a site of emotional flux — where perception fractures and inner states become visible form.

Be inspired by the photographers on the 2024 List. 2024 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Anna Tut ALEXANDROS ZILOS Athens GREECE AMY HOROWITZ New York UNITED STATES ANA-MARIA ALB Bukovina ROMANIA ANN PETRUCKEVITCH UNITED KINGDOM ANNA TUT Krasnogorsk City RUSSIA CARMEN SOLANA CIRES Madrid SPAIN CATIA MONTAGNA SCOTLAND/ITALY DASHA DARVAJ UMRIGAR Karachi PAKISTAN DEDIPYA BASAK Kolkata INDIA EDWIN CARUNGAY San Francisco UNITED STATES FRANCE LECLERC Chicago UNITED STATES ISABELLE COORDES Münster GERMANY JOHN KAYACAN Los Angeles UNITED STATES JUSTINE GEORGET Lyon FRANCE MARIETTE PATHY ALLEN New York UNITED STATES MATTHIAS GÖDDE Beckum GERMANY MEI SEVA New York UNITED STATES MIA DEPAOLA Washington D.C UNITED STATES NAZANIN DAVARI Tehran IRAN PAUL COOKLIN UNITED KINGDOM PEDRO VIDAL Barcelona SPAIN RAFA ROJAS São Paulo BRAZIL ROMAIN COUDRIER Marseille FRANCE ROWELL B. TIMOTEO La Union PHILIPPINES SASHA IVANOV St. Petersburg RUSSIA

Be inspired by the photographers on the 2025 List. 2025 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Stephanie Duprie Routh ABDULLA SHINOSE CK Malabar INDIA ALEJANDRO DAVILA Pachuca MEXICO ANTON BOU Montreal CANADA AYANAVA SIL Kolkata INDIA BETTY GOH SINGAPORE BUKU SARKAR Paris FRANCE CYNTHIA KARALLA New York UNITED STATES DAVID GRAY New York UNITED STATES EVA MALLIS New York UNITED STATES FANJA HUBERS Utrecht THE NETHERLANDS FUTURE HACKNEY London UNITED KINGDOM GIORDANO SIMONCINI Rome ITALY GUILLERMO FRANCO Córdoba ARGENTINA HIROYUKI ITO New York UNITED STATES JAY HSU Yilan City TAIWAN KAT PUCHOWSKA Barcelona SPAIN LAETITIA HEISLER Berlin GERMANY LUISA MONTAGNA Parma ITALY MASSIMO LUPIDI ITALY MATTEO BERGAMI Bologna ITALY MEERA NERURKAR Düsseldorf GERMANY NASOS KARABELAS Greece ATHENS NICOLA CAPPELLARI Vicenza ITALY PARISA AZADI IRAN & DUBAI PARVATHI KUMAR New Jersey UNITED STATES