Nitin Madhav
Nitin’s love of photography blossomed while backpacking in Bhutan with a Minolta camera borrowed from his mother during a college summer break. After graduate school, he worked in the Afghan refugee camps outside Peshawar, Pakistan, armed with a manual Nikon FM2 camera and several dozen rolls of Kodachrome-64 in a Ziploc bag. He soon learned that the camera helped him create relationships.
As a humanitarian worker, he has been on the front lines of many conflicts and has seen the ugly side of human behavior. He has been rocketed, assaulted, held hostage, and was the sole survivor in an attack in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide — losing his leg to nine bullets. Over the past three decades, he has worked in many war-torn countries struggling to recover from conflict. His camera became his tool to create levity in otherwise tense situations. Conversely, it also helps him document the beauty that the world offers.
Nitin mastered the fundamentals of exposure, metering and composition with a manual film camera, and still uses manual mode to maintain a purity of process, despite now using digital cameras. He will wait patiently for the subject to get comfortable, and then get as close as he safely can to capture details, such as the individual hairs on a lion’s face.
His minimally processed work uses monochromes to highlight the beauty of these creatures and emphasize the interplay between light and shadows on skin and fur.
Nitin hopes his work displays his deep reverence for his subjects — capturing their souls by getting as close as possible, without disrupting, harming or baiting the animals.
During the pandemic, he was fortunate to spend time in the Serengeti where he made the shift from photographing people to wildlife. In response to print requests from social media posts, he began to sell prints and donated profits to conservation organizations. Given the stress and strife in his professional life, the tranquility of the natural world brings him peace.
Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, he now lives in Washington, DC and travels as much as he can. His photography has been featured by Men’s Health, Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveller UK and Maptia
Nitin uses his photography to raise awareness about social and conservation issues, and has been a proud participant in several print sales campaigns such as Prints for Wildlife in 2022 benefitting African National Parks, PictoNY in 2023 benefitting Doctors of the World and 100 for the Oceans in 2024, benefitting ocean conservation.
