Ashvin Mehta (1931) is one of India’s most distinguished photographers, whom Larry Berryman called ‘a master of scale and a metaphysical poet among the artists’. (Art Review, London, May 1986). In a career that spans several decades, he has excelled in various genres, including nature photography, destination photography, and the cityscape.

His work has been collected in a series of books, including Himalaya: Encounters with Eternity (Thames & Hudson, London, 1985), Coasts of India (Thames & Hudson, London, 1987), Gifts of Solitude (Mapin, Ahmedabad, 1991), Hundred Himalayan Flowers (Mapin, Ahmedabad, 1992), Happenings - Journal of Luminous Moments (Micro Inks - formerly Hindustan Inks, Vapi, Gujarat, 2003), Intimate Cityscapes (Archer, Ahmedabad, 2004), Bicycle - a celebration (Archer, Ahmedabad, 2006) and Contemplative Colour - a photographer’s tribute to abstract painting (Archer, Ahmedabad, 2007).

His work has also been shown in the group exhibitions ‘Creative Eye’, curated by Raghu Rai (New Delhi, 1972); ‘Indian Photography: 1844-1984’, curated by Mitter Bedi (Darmstadt, 1984); and ‘Another Way of Seeing’, curated by Circle of 24 (The Netherlands, 1992). Mehta has also been engaged in a number of prestigious collective projects, including A Day in the Life of India (Collins, San Francisco, 1995), and the Festivals of India in Britain (1982), Russia (1990) and Germany (1991).

He has been commissioned as a destination photographer by Singapore Airlines, the Oberoi Hotels, and the India Tourism Development Corporation. He has also photographed the Indian medicinal plants for a monograph by Chemical Export Promotion Council (Chemexil), and the spices of India for the Taj Hotels. Mehta, who first exhibited his photographs in 1966, has since held exhibitions at the Jehangir Art Gallery, the Centre for Photography as an Art Form, and Gallery Chemould, Bombay; the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, and Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, and the Gardner Centre for the Arts, Brighton, Britain. Recently, his life-work (“Celebrating the timeless”) has been included in the permanent collection of IGNCA (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts), New Delhi. It consists of 915 high-resolution digitalized images representing 13 distinct series of photographs.

Ashvin Mehta has been living in a tiny village of Gujarat for the past 28 years, choosing to remove himself from the city of Mumbai, but he has still managed to have an international career as a photographer and publish several books. He is now 77, and has retired from active photography for health reasons.