About Me
Hi, my name is Santosh, and I love music, photography, and coffee.
My love for music started when I was in the seventh grade. One of my good friends’ elder brothers went to college and had the money to buy music, and my friend brought cassettes to school and shared them with us. His brother's taste became our taste — Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Judas Priest. MTV launched in India around the same time, bringing us Seattle and grunge. We considered anything softer beneath us until the day someone put on Led Zeppelin's box set. We couldn't believe how diverse their music was, and it opened our appetite for everything. My life hasn't been the same since. Today I enjoy all kinds of music besides techno, with a particular love for rock, jazz, blues, and beyond.
I've been going to concerts for as long as I can remember. Many of my most memorable moments have been in those rooms. I never really took photos, though — I was just there for the music.
During COVID, I found myself replaying favorite moments in my head. The Tom Waits show kept coming back. The entire night felt like both two seconds and two years. One of maybe two shows across thousands that I'd call truly perfect. I took maybe three or four pictures that whole night. I didn't know then what that night would come to mean, but I'm so glad I had those frames to return to.
Around the same time, Mark Lanegan died. Sudden, unexpected, too soon. It hit me hard. And then I came across Michael Palmisano's reaction to Evan Bartel's Shotgun — if you haven't seen it, please watch it. Michael's words were a push I didn't know I needed: stop waiting, do something with the time you have. I thought about all the shows I'd attended without a camera. All the moments I couldn't return to. I didn't want to keep doing that.
So I took my camera to a Hania Rani show. I photographed her, and afterward we spoke. She was so kind about the pictures — and then she used one to promote her European tour. That kindness gave me the confidence to keep going, to take this seriously.
I moved to London and found the scenes. Café OTO in Dalston. The Vortex. The Windmill. The George Tavern. Small rooms, serious music, difficult light. I am there for the music and shooting for the joy it gives me — that part hasn't changed, and I hope it never will. Most of the time, my favorite pictures get no attention at all, and I am absolutely fine with that. Gradually, though, people started calling the work art. A photograph ended up in one of Otomo Yoshihide's CD releases. Wire Magazine picked up some pictures. Collaborations followed with Jim Jarmusch, Destroyer, and others I still can't quite believe.
Café OTO has become my second home. I'm there most weeks, and no two shows are ever the same — the light shifts, the band changes, the crowd arrives differently, the vantage point you thought you knew surprises you. I have never once felt comfortable shooting there. That discomfort is exactly what made me a photographer.
My day job in technology is rewarding but relentless. Photography is what keeps me sane.