I owe a lot to my family for mustering up the courage to send me to Light & Life Academy for my training in photography, but I must admit that it was at America On-line Limited (AOL), Bangalore where I really grasped the tricks of the trade”, acknowledges Jyothy Karat who specializes in photojournalism, travel and fine art photography.
“All my free time was devoted to shooting, and I began exhibiting my work in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. In 2009, I was chosen to attend the Angkor Photo Workshop in Cambodia. This workshop provided young photographers from Asia with an opportunity to enrich their skills in documenting their own societies, and in understanding universal ethics and professional standards. Once I I returned from the workshop, I quit my desk job and branched out as a freelance photographer. In hindsight, I realized that that story telling in Bangalore is a tough and serious business”, she recalls.
Apart from managing a team of photo editors and handling AOL’s photography website, Pixcetera.com , she also worked with the local and international teams, tracked metrics, interviewed photographers, and created multimedia content for AOL’s various websites. She is currently involved with a project involving the women of urban India.
Although Bangalore is home, Jyothy Karat’s portfolio displays travel stories from the United States, Singapore, Malaysia and Cambodia, including a powerful collection of visual stories on child sexual abuse in Cambodia. With the camera as her comrade, she has journeyed across the Indian Peninsula, worked on multimedia stories covering human rights issues, reported cultural festivals and folk arts, studied eastern and western dance forms etc. Her first exhibition was a group show in four major cities. The second show called ‘Art Space and the City’ was hosted at the Max Mueller Bhavan in Bangalore. Her most recent show, again hosted by the Max Mueller Bhavan, which explored spaces in the city that usually remain hidden from the conventional tourist ambit, but hold enormous cultural significance and value.
Mathew Thottungal
 Inside Outside! |
 Enduring Mystique |
 Into Twilight |
 Elephant in Temple Town |
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 Glimmer of Hope |
 Holy Cow! |
 Little Buddhas |
