From ragpicking to living a dream

Documentary photographer

Vicky Roy was just an 11-year-old when he ran away from his grandparents’ home in Purulia, West Bengal to escape the deplorable conditions. He then came to Delhi, and to survive in the city, became a ragpicker. But because he could not sustain for long, he took up a job as a dishwasher in a street side restaurant where a volunteer from NGO Salaam Balak Trust (SBT) spotted him and enrolled him in a school. “In 2000, I got admission to class sixth and I made it till Class 10 by securing a mere 48 per cent. Looking at my low scores and slow academic progress, my professor told me to pursue something else. Fortunately, that is when a photography workshop was organised in the trust, wherein one of my friends had participated. He got an opportunity to go to Indonesia. I then decided to pursue photography, so that I could go to different places,” mentions Roy.

He met Dixie Benjamin, a British filmmaker, who was making a documentary on SBT. Roy hit it off with Benjamin and became his assistant, and thus began his photographic journey. Despite their language differences, Roy was able to understand concepts like aperture, lighting, focus and more.

Later, Roy met a Delhi-based photographer Anay Maan, who readily agreed to teach him. “Up to the age of 18, I stayed at SBT and later started staying in a rented flat after Anay began to give me a stipend. During the same time, I had taken a loan from the trust to buy a black and white Nikon camera. I used to pay Rs 500 as instlalment and Rs 2,500 as rent. Whenever the money wasn’t enough, I worked at high-end hotels as a waiter and got Rs 250 per day,” he recalls.

Now, as an award-winning photographer of international acclaim, he is part of the Forbes Asia 30 under 30 list in 2016 and a TEDx speaker. “I decided to shoot my own journey on streets of Delhi and in 2007, I showcased my first photography exhibition ‘Street Dreams’ at India

Habitat Centre which was a huge success. It went to London, Vietnam and South Africa,” the 28-year-old tells Metrolife, on the sidelines of the recently held fifth edition of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) ‘Annual Conference and
Exposition 2016’.

Later, Roy got nominated along with three other photographers from across the world for a worldwide competition in New York. “At the beginning of 2009, I was in New York for a six-month residency at the International Centre for Photography. I had the chance to shoot the reconstruction of World Trade Centre for six months and simultaneously, I studied documentary photography for six months at ICP,” he mentions.  

His work was exhibited at WTC 7, and won the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and he was invited for a lunch with Prince Edward at Buckingham Palace. Roy’s work started to go places including Whitechapel Gallery and the Fotomusem Switzerland. He held his second solo exhibition – WTC: Now- at the American centre in Delhi, in 2009. In 2010, Roy and his friend Chandan Gomes started a photography library at Sri
Aurobindo Centre for Arts for which they approached established photographers including Raghu Rai and Pablo Bartholomew. “I requested them to donate their books, so that photography aspirants who can’t afford such books can benefit and inculcate photography as a habit,” he says.

Does he ever regret running away from home? “Now that it has worked in my favour, I can’t say so. But what I can definitely say is, if you pursue your passion and do your work, recognition will follow, no matter whether you have had a privileged life or not,” he says.