Soumya Sankar Bose (b. 1990; lives and works in Kolkata, India) reconstructs archival materials and oral history into photography, films, alternative archives, and artist books. His hybrid mode of practice interweaving long-term research and engagement with local communities including his own family history accentuates certain subaltern experiences of the marginalised yet resilient in post-Partition Bengal.
Bose was awarded Magnum Foundation’s Social Justice Fellowship for Full Moon on a Dark Night in 2017. He received Hello! India’s Emerging Artist of the Year in 2023 and the Louis Roederer Discovery Public Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles for A Discreet Exit through Darkness in 2023. He received the 2020 Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art's Amol Vadehra Art Grant; His photobook Where the Birds Never Sing was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards 2020. Bose was part of World Press Photo's Joop Swart Masterclass, 2019. His project Let’s Sing an Old Song was awarded India Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2015 & 2017 and he was awarded the Toto Emerging Photographer of the Year award in 2015. He was Artistic chair at The Beaux-Arts Nantes Saint-Nazaire, le lieu unique, the city of Nantes and the Institut d'études avancées, France, 2025.
Select solo and group exhibitions include Braiding dawn and dusk, Delfina Art Foundation, London (2024); When Images Take Care, Centre de la photographie, Genève (2024); A Discreet Exit Through Darkness, Les Rencontres d'Arles, Arles and Experimenter, Mumbai & Kolkata (2023); India today, Magazzino delle Idee, Trieste (2023); Belfast Photo Festival, Belfast (2023), Where The Birds Never Sing, Experimenter, Kolkata (2021); Goethe-Institut's Five Million Incidents (2019); Let’s Sing an Old Song, Experimenter Outpost, Kolkata, (2019); Full Moon on a Dark Night, Experimenter, Kolkata (2018); Photo Kathmandu, Nepal (2018); Houston Centre for Photography, Houston, (2018); Chitrabani, Kolkata (2016); Goethe-Institut, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata (2016); Goa Photo (2015); Delhi Photo Festival (2015), among others.