Anjali Tirkey is a Guwahati based independent professional photographer who narrates human-interest stories against the socio-cultural backdrop of the region and brings a unique visual perspective to her every work. She took to professional photography in the year 2012. And was featured in the British Journal of Photography in 2013 after her Magnum Workshop with Master Photographer Abbas.
“Every object, every landscape, every person, every issue, needs to be seen with honesty, with beauty and dignity. And that is what I try to do with camera,” she says. “That is a constant even when my modes of expression have changed over time from pen to camera.”
Prior to shifting to the photography, she had been a columnist and feature writer and had penned articles for few dailies and magazines and some international journals covering topics like travel, women and children, health, environment and wildlife, socio-cultural life of different communities and the centuries of wisdom and the issues of the indigenous peoples. She has made a few documentary films on varied subjects like River Brahmaputra, Health initiatives of Govt of Assam and to Indigenous Peoples. Her documentary films on the Adivasis of Assam titled “‘Lesser Inhabitants of the Green Paradise” and Mother-tongue based Multilingual Education amongst the tea garden workers’ children titled “Rijhe Sikhab Sange Jaghab” have been well appreciated. Her work has been recognised internationally and she is the recipient of the Excellence in Journalism Award by UCIP in 2007.
She has also made many audio-video advertisements on health issues and had a stint with radio and hosted a travel talk show on FM channel. She is also an avid traveller, certified scuba diver and adventure enthusiast. But it’s with her camera, she feels more evocative. It’s her camera which gives voices to her subjects. She has photographed and designed 5 calendars and 3 books to date.
She is currently working on three photobook projects
1. Tribal Handloom Heritage of Assam,
2. Tea plantation workers in Assam,
3. Apatani Tribes in Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh.