Aparna Jayakumar
Jayakumar’s long-term projects include Goodbye Padmini, a meditation on Mumbai’s disappearing black-and-yellow taxis and the migrant drivers who operated them; Marriages are Made in Bureaus, a look at arranged marriage practices in Kerala; and Doha Fashion Fridays, a collaborative portrait series that documents migrant worker fashion in Qatar. Her visual approach is often cinematic, combining typology with empathy and a sharp eye for vernacular aesthetics.
Jayakumar has worked across varied visual domains, from film publicity stills for directors like Mira Nair and Sooni Taraporevala to brand campaigns for Hermès, Qatar Airways, Meta and Vodafone. Her work has appeared in Monocle, Harper’s Bazaar, BBC TopGear and Bloomberg, and has been commissioned by institutions including the Ford Foundation, UNESCO and FairPicture. She won the AI-AP / American Photography 40 prize in 2024 for a story on Rajasthan for Travel+Leisure USA.
She has taught photography at Sophia College (Mumbai), Virginia Commonwealth University and Georgetown University (Doha), and led visual storytelling workshops for Cambodian NGO Anjali House. In 2012, she founded the Bombay Photo Club to promote public engagement with photography.
Jayakumar’s work has been exhibited internationally, in galleries and institutions across New York, Paris, Miami, Bratislava, Rome, St. Petersburg, Doha and more. Currently based in Abu Dhabi, she continues to navigate the intersections of labour, culture and visual history, asking how images shape — and are shaped by — the social worlds they inhabit.
