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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. 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. Latest features 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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

We are on a mission to discover new photographers, and the most pictorial and interesting photo stories out there. SPOTLIGHT / WILLIAM JOSEPHS RADFORD Cheltenham UNITED KINGDOM 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

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 2022 List. 2022 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Adrian Pelegrin ADRIAN PELEGRIN Playa del Carmen MEXICO AHSANUL HAQUE FAHIM Dhaka, BANGLADESH AJ BERNSTEIN New York UNITED STATES ANWAR EHTESHAM Dhaka BANGLADESH ASEN GEORGIEV Sofia BULGARIA ASLI GONEN Eskisehir TURKEY BRIAN DOUGLAS Ontario CANADA CAHLEEN HUDSON New Taipei City TAIWAN CHETAN VERMA Gurgaon INDIA DEAN GOLDBERG New York UNITED STATES ELIZABETH PAOLETTI UNITED STATES EMIR SEVIM Istanbul TURKEY EMY MAIKE Baden Württemberg GERMANY FRANCESCA TIBONI Cagliari ITALY GABRIEL MIELES GUZMÁN Guayaquil ECUADOR GABRIELE GENTILE Parma ITALY GIANLUCA MORTAROTTI London UNITED KINGDOM GIORGIO GERARDI Venice ITALY JAN ENKELMANN London UNITED KINGDOM JEAN ROSS New York UNITED STATES JELISA PETERSON Texas UNITED STATES JENS F. KRUSE Mallorca SPAIN JONAS WELTEN Salzburg AUSTRIA LAINE MULLALLY Stockholm SWEDEN LELE BISSOLI Vercelli ITALY

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

Be inspired by the photographers on the 2020 List. 2020 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Abbie Briggs ABBIE BRIGGS Madison UNITED STATES ABHAY PATEL Delhi INDIA ABHISHEK SINGH New Delhi INDIA ADAM SINCLAIR Melbourne AUSTRALIA ADESH GAUR Uttar Pradesh INDIA ADRIAN TAN SINGAPORE ADRIAN WHEAR Melbourne AUSTRALIA AHMET HOJAMYRADOV Minsk BELARUS ALEX FRAYNE Adelaide AUSTRALIA ALEXANDRA AVLONITIS Manhattan UNITED STATES ALEXEY STRECHEN Moscow RUSSIA ALICIA HABER Montevideo URAGUAY ANEEKA MANKU Birmingham UNITED KINGDOM ANGEL CARNICER Zaragoza SPAIN ANNA MARCHIOLI Clamart FRANCE ANNETTE LANG Nice FRANCE ANTONIS GIAKOUMAKIS Athens GREECE ANWAR SADAT Nairobi KENYA ARTURO CAÑEDO Lima PERU ASHISH PATEL Delhi INDIA ASSIA STARKE Vienna AUSTRIA ASTRID NEUNDLINGER Vienna AUSTRIA B JANE LEVINE New York City UNITED STATES BELINDA CORNEY London UNITED KINGDOM BENNY VAN DEN BULKE Adegem BELGIUM

Be inspired by the photographers on the 2021 List. 2021 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Meryl Meisler AGATA LO MONACO Gela ITALY ALAN THEXTON Melbourne AUSTRALIA ALEX RUTHERFORD Surrey UNITED KINGDOM ANDRES GONZALEZ Porto PORTUGAL ANDREW ROVENKO Melbourne AUSTRALIA ANDRÉ LOBÃO London UNITED KINGDOM AURÉLIEN BOMY Nantes FRANCE BARRY BOTTOMLEY London UNITED KINGDOM BASTIAN PETER Basel SWITZERLAND BEN ALLAN London UNITED KINGDOM BETTY MANOUSOS Athens GREECE CAMILLE WHEELER Austin UNITED STATES CARLA HENOUD Beirut LEBANON CAROL DRONSFIELD Brooklyn UNITED STATES CHICHEK BAYRAMLY Baku AZERBAIJAN CHRISTINA SIMONS Melbourne AUSTRALIA DAMIEN GORET Brest FRANCE DANIEL GOLDENBERG Buenos Aires ARGENTINA DANIELA PEREIRA Montevideo URUGUAY DANNY JACKSON Essex UNITED KINGDOM DAVID KUGELMAS New Jersey UNITED STATES DAVID LAWLESS Winnipeg CANADA DAVID SHORTLAND London UNITED KINGDOM DREW KELLEY California UNITED STATES EDUARDO ORTIZ Valparaiso CHILE