Mahesh Shantaram — Documentary Photographer and Data Scientist

Mahesh Shantaram
Data Scientist.
Documentary Photographer.
Visual Storyteller.
Bangalore, India.

Hi, I’m Mahesh Shantaram, a Bangalore-based data scientist working in the public interest, with an earlier career as an independent documentary photographer.

For over a decade, my work focused on long-form, narrative documentary projects examining Indian society, politics, and institutions. My photography projects were built over years rather than assignments, requiring deep fieldwork, pattern recognition, and the ability to synthesise complex social systems into coherent, accessible narratives. This work was shown internationally at festivals including Photoquai (Paris), PhotoPhnomPenh, Delhi Photo Festival, Addis Photo Festival, Chobi Mela, and Angkor Photo Festival, among others.

One such project, Matrimania, used India's wedding industry as a lens to examine class, aspiration, consumption, and social power. Another, Last Days of Manmohan, documented political culture in India during the lead-up to the 2014 general elections by deliberately misusing the visual language of news photojournalism to study politics as theatre. More recently, my work turned to portraiture and lived experience, focusing on racism faced by African migrants living in India through projects such as Racism in India: The African Portraits.

Over time, the analytical spine of this work began to matter more to me than the medium itself. I transitioned into data science to continue doing what I had always done: interrogating systems, working with evidence, and communicating complex realities to the public. Today, I work at the intersection of data analysis, visualisation, and storytelling, using statistical reasoning and computational tools to make sense of public systems, infrastructure, and policy.

I hold a degree in Computer Electronics and a diploma in photography from Paris, and I've been based in Bangalore since 2006. My work—whether photographic or computational—remains driven by the same question: how do large systems shape everyday life, and how can we make those systems legible to the people who live inside them?

Circumstances once forced me to steer a Volvo bus to safety. I've also flown a plane after six pints of Guinness (not recommended). I still can't drive a car.