THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The handful of profiles and articles that have been written so far about Vicky Roy, in the Indian and Western media, have perhaps unfairly played up his swift and unlikely rise from being a unheard-of photographer to an internationally exhibiting artist. And yet, the fact must be stated,that Vicky's personal story does seem very close to that of a stereotyped rags-to-riches fairytale, from the streets of India.
To recount his biography, Vicky was born and grew up in Purulia district of West Bengal, in a neighbourhood known for its relative poverty. At age 11, with a few hundred rupees from his mother, he ran away from home to the capital, New Delhi.
Life was difficult for the young lad, as he first began working as a rag picker, and then, faced by local ruffians who would bully him out of his earnings, he turned to a day job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. Vicky was eventually picked out by a concerned citizen, who led him to the Salam Baalak Trust, a children’s NGO. Thereafter, he began attending school, and would even take care of the NGO’s young boys, and help them with homework.
On completing his Grade X, Vicky joined the National Institute of Open Schooling, where he picked up an interest for photography. He took up studies on the subject at the Triveni Kala Sangam, before coming upon a British filmmaker who was making a documentary on the NGO Salam Baalak.
Soon enough, Vicky was helping out as an assistant for the filming of the lives of Delhi’s street kids, and his most important lessons on photography came at this time, as he apprenticed under AnayMann, and also with OP Sharma, both prominent photographers who groomed him as his mentor.
This Scarred Land
Expectedly, Vicky’s most popular pictures are primarily focused on street children and urchins, in scenes commonly on the footpath, or on railway platforms. Even as a professional, Vicky’s favourite theme is street life and street kids, as he channelises a natural ability to bring out smiles on the faces of the children he meets.
Vicky’s first big break was in 2007, as The India Habitat Gallery, New Delhi, hosted his solo show titled Street Dreams, sponsored by the British High Commission and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). Vicky went on to attend a six-month residency at New York’s International Centre for Photography, where he had the privileged access to the site of the World Trade Centre (WTC) ruins, and was selected by the Maybach Foundation to document the reconstruction of the towers. The awards soon followed, including an MIT Media Fellowship (2014), and Vicky was also named on an Asian 30 under-30 list in 2016.
Vicky’s moment of glory happened when his photographs were selected to be shown on location at WTC 7, and he was conferred the Duke of Edinburgh Award. As fairytale stories go, Vicky soon found himself invited to lunch with Prince Edward at Buckingham Palace.
The success prompted Vicky to play his part for society, and he founded the photo library, Rang, at Ojas Art Gallery in Mehrauli, which frequently hosts photography workshops for children in schools and from shelters around the capital city. Vicky even released a monograph titled Home Street Home, published by the Nazar Foundation, and hosted another solo show, This Scarred Land: New Mountainscape at Vadehra Art Gallery, before participating at the Houston FotoFest Biennnial — and eventually, arriving at the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
‘A big family get-together’
The larger role of the Biennale, for Vicky, has been to bring together various streams of contemporary art, and in a sense, unify them with a common purview, with shared themes and ideas. “The Kochi-Muziris Biennale offers a myriad of visuals, thoughts and experiences for visitors to take home, to reflect and to cultivate,” agrees Vicky.