EFIAP, MPSA, GPU-Cr4+VIP3+Aphrodite, IIG/s2+p9, HonAvTvISO
Born in 1979, Udayan Sankar Pal grew up in Canning (WB, India), the gateway of the Sunderbans. He has been dabbling with photography since he was 13 years old. Hailing from a village himself, his eyes are drawn towards those elements that he can identify with, that are hidden from a city dweller. He has honed his skills over the span of 31 years and has received over 6000 awards both from National and International forums. He has also been awarded many distinctions and honours.
Udayan’s interest in photography extends to many other aspects beyond just clicking photographs on his own. He has established the only international Archive of Photography Exhibition in the world with over 10,000 brochures in his collection right now. He also is an active contributor to magazines and journals where he likes to pen his thoughts about photography and share his knowledge with other like-minded photographers. A respected mentor to budding and amateur photographers, he also has been invited to many events as a thought leader and speaker in the world of photography. He also believes in propagating the art form through various other initiatives such as running photography salons in India, acting as a judge in many national and international salons, running a photographers cooperatives under the brand of AvTvISO (AvTvISO.com) & IIG (indiainternationalgroup.com), supporting photographers by purchasing prints and building a gallery dedicated to the art called SignedPRINTS, building a world class personal library of rare and iconic books on photography with over 1000 titles painstakingly collected over many years, collecting and curating a well acknowledged collection of postal stamps related to photography and many more such initiatives.
He says photography is all about the eye. You either see things or are influenced to see things. Having travelled a long way from the bare feet camera toting village lad to a selective shutterbug and a passionate pursuer of the art of photography in all its forms, he truly believes that photography is his religion.