Shashwat Das is a lens-based artist whose practice engages with histories of movement, displacement, and impermanence in South Asia. Raised in a Probashi Bengali household shaped by narratives of forced migration from former East Pakistan, his work is informed by questions of inherited memory, rupture, and belonging. His image-making began with drawing and quickly shifted to photography at the age of five when he was gifted his first point and shoot film camera.
He is an alumnus of Pathshala’s Resting Academy, a participant of the Angkor Photoworkshop, and a scholarship recipient at the Salzburg Summer Academy of Fine Arts. He has been awarded Master Photographer status in Russia (2019) and is winner of the 2026 Toto Photography Awards.
Achievements
2026 - Winner Toto Awards for Photography
2026 - Alkazi Theater Photography Grant (Special Jury Mention)
2025 - Fresh Eyes recipient GUP magazine
2019 - Master Photographer, awarded by the Director of Hermitage Museum, Russia
2019 - Featured at Lift-Off Festival, London for first short film Boond
2018 - National Award as Emerging Photographer by NIFA
Fellowships
2026 - Angkor PhotoWorkshops Participant
2025 - Summer Academy Open Studio (Austria)
2025 - Resting Academy International Residency (Pathshala Institute)
2022 - Docedge Kolkata Observer Resident
2019 - Project Atlantis Plen Air (Russia)
Exhibitions
2025 - Summer Academy Open Studio (Austria)
2025 - Zalet Art Festival (Serbia)
2025 - Drik Gallery, Dhaka “ Group Show Phosphenes
2025 - Hungry Eye Fair, Fresh Eyes (Amsterdam)
2025 - Synthetic FLow (Kathmandu)
2019 - Stainless Art Gallery, Delhi (Varanasi)
2019 - Stainless Art Gallery, Delhi (Dilli Tere Ishq Mein)
2019 - India International Center “ Vriksha” by Uma Nair
2019 - International Open Air Exhibition, Project Atlantis Plen Air (Russia)
2019 - Master Gallery, Saint Petersburg Group Exhibition
2018 - MS University Baroda “ Top 100 Images of 2018”
First image shot in Ladakh 2004