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In the realm of contemporary Indian photography, Amit Mali stands out for his ability to make images that evoke emotional thresholds. Trained as an engineer before turning to the camera, his work spans fashion, editorial, and personal projects — always suffused with an intensity that resists easy categorisation. Drawing on influences from Prabuddha Dasgupta to Indian mythology, Mali balances discipline with intuition, and surrender with control. His photographs are not only about what is seen on the surface, but about the invisible energies and contradictions that lie beneath appearances.
Mali’s entry into photography was an accident that changed the course of his life. Originally on a conventional career path in engineering, he imagined a future in automobile design abroad. But six months into his course, he found himself restless, wandering the streets with his brother’s DSLR instead of attending classes. “Photography became a language for me,” he says. “I’d leave home pretending to go to lectures, but really, I was teaching myself to see.”
When his brother noticed the work and encouraged him to take it seriously, Mali took on a job assisting photographer Ritesh Ramaiah in Pune — a turning point that immersed him in the rigour and rhythm of fashion photography. What began as a rebellion against predictability became an epiphany. “That shift wasn’t just a career change,” he says. “It was a transformation of my life’s rhythm.”
Mali describes his influences as, “a constellation — fragments that keep shimmering and shaping my perspective.” Early on, while assisting Ramaiah, a senior colleague introduced him to Prabuddha Dasgupta’s photographs. “His images, filled with intimacy and raw sensuality, completely transformed my understanding of what an image could be,” he says. His influences later expanded to include Annie Leibovitz, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Antoine d’Agata.
But names are only part of the story.
“What attracts me are sensibilities — artists unafraid of intensity, beauty that can both wound and seduce,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s not even an image but a line from Osho, words by Rumi, or a film I catch half-asleep at night.” Above all, India itself — its mythology, rituals, torn cinema posters, the collision of chaos and silence — is an unending source. “They are memory scars recurring in my visual language,” he says.
For Mali, the creative process begins not with a concept but with emotion — an obsessive thought, a feeling that demands embodiment. “My image-making starts with something visceral,” he says. “It’s a need to externalise feeling into form.” Music becomes his compass: trawling through Bandcamp and SoundCloud, he searches for sounds that amplify the emotion.
His photographs often resist narrative clarity, moving instead toward atmosphere and suggestion. “I prepare for a subject’s story and energy, but what I’m truly trying to capture lies beyond that,” he says. “At a certain point, all prep disappears, and a cosmic presence takes over. The camera allows the intangible to reveal itself.”
Over time, Mali has learned that intuition flourishes best within structure. “Structure isn’t a cage,” he insists. “It’s clarity — discipline that makes creation more resourceful.” In filmmaking, especially, he sees planning as a philosophical act. “Without boundaries, freedom becomes chaos. Structure tells you when to create and when to stop.”
Still, intuition remains the heart of his process. “Intellect, instinct, and intuition are equal partners,” he says. “When they find rhythm with one another, creation becomes play — where discipline and wildness coexist.”
Mali’s photographs are often layered with metaphor and symbolism — motifs that emerge from emotion rather than intention. “Symbolism in my work functions like a current,” he notes. “It reveals itself in fragments — memory, sound, gesture.” His interest lies not in clarity but in mystery: “Enduring images aren’t defined by what they explain but by what they withhold.”
Fashion, for him, is integral to this process. “Clothing is language,” he says. “In personal projects, stylists help me create a vocabulary of forms and textures for metaphorical expression. It’s not about decoration — it’s about translating emotion into physical presence.”
Mali’s work fluidly shifts between brand assignments and personal projects, which he now describes as “parallel rivers — sometimes diverging, sometimes converging.” “I once saw them as opposites,” he reflects. “Now, they feel like lovers in conversation.” Personal projects are instinctive and raw; commercial work is disciplined and refined. “One sharpens instinct, the other adds poetry.”
Constraints, he insists, can be liberating. “A small budget fosters intimacy; a rigid brief sparks metaphor. Constraints push you to think differently,” he says. “They’re not walls — they’re scaffolding. Even compromise can lead to revelation.”
Mali’s images feel unsettlingly intimate because they emerge from collaboration rooted in trust. “It took years to learn how to communicate with subjects,” he admits. “Trust isn’t instant — it’s a language.” For him, silence can be as meaningful as direction. “Sometimes, the truest form of trust is simply allowing someone to be.”
His creative team — many of whom are friends from college and the art world — play an equally crucial role. “Stylists are vital,” he says. “They don’t just dress a subject; they interpret emotion.” Authenticity, he believes, comes from surrender. “When everyone’s frequency aligns, the image reveals itself.”
Looking back, Mali sees a pattern in his work — a recurring theme of certain emotional currents. “I keep revisiting longing, solitude, fragility, resilience,” he says. “These aren’t just emotions — they’re thresholds between vulnerability and strength.” He wants to capture what flickers beneath the face — the silence, the ache, that fleeting spark.
What draws him back, again and again, is contradiction: “The tension between what is shown and what is hidden, fragile and unbreakable — that inexhaustible contradiction is what keeps me creating.”
Mali’s practice reveals a restless search for mood, rhythm, and truth beyond narrative. Whether creating brand campaigns or private visual journals, he returns to the intensity of longing, fragility, and resilience. His images invite the viewer to linger in ambiguity and to listen to what remains unspoken. In them, the unseen hums just beneath the surface — a reminder that the most enduring photographs are not about what they show, but about what they allow us to feel.
Follow Amit Mali here.
