Bharat Sikka

Bharat Sikka was already working as a photographer in India before he decided to study at the Parsons School of Design in New York, where he earned a BFA in photography. His first major exhibition was in 2002, as part of Sotheby’s “Moments of Clarity” exhibition in New York. He has since shown all over the world, and had his photographs displayed in India’s National Museum.

Sikka shoots portraits, landscapes, fashion and art, capturing the exuberance, colour and spirit of the Indian sub-continent. Blessed with an eye for the surrealism of reality and the oddity of humanity and nature, Sikka’s photography often casts the world in an otherworldly light. His photography has been featured in American Vogue, British Vogue, i-D, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, The New Yorker, Details, Stiletto and Marie Claire. He has worked on campaigns for Bergdorf Goodman and is regularly commissioned by Time magazine to photograph some of the world’s most remote and beautiful places.

His recent output is marked by a series of deeply personal and experimental projects, including “The Sapper” (2022), an intimate collaboration with his father that was nominated for the 2023 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Award, and “Elephant in the Room” (2025), a project that engages in a critical dialogue with AI and machine perception. To date, Sikka has published nine monographs and has shown at dozens of group and solo exhibitions worldwide.

Sikka joined the judging panel for the 2018-2019 Nikon Photo Contest and is the founder of Neither, a South Asian contemporary photography magazine launched in 2023. He also serves as a director at Ransom Film, overseeing commercial campaigns for global brands such as Nike, BMW and Spotify.