“I did not discover photography through a camera. I discovered it through the desire to hold on to a feeling, a face, or a moment that would otherwise disappear.” – Vineet Vohra
Our 2026 Street Photography Award is now open for entries and will be judged by Vineet Vohra. The first Indian Leica Ambassador, Vohra has spent decades navigating urban environments to capture everyday scenes with a sharp eye for geometry, color, layers, and timing.
A man walks along a dusty roadside in a white dhoti, his stride almost perfectly mirroring the sharp diagonal stripe of a blue bus behind him. A young boy holding a hooded cobra stands on temple steps as a woman sweeps in the background, creating a richly layered scene of orange terracotta and vibrant textiles. A man gazes directly into the lens as a formation of migrating birds rises from behind his head, transforming an otherwise fleeting encounter into something almost dreamlike.
These are the kinds of moments that define Vohra’s photography. Found amid the chaos and unpredictability of daily life, they possess an unusual sense of order, with form, color, shadow, and human gesture coming together in unexpected ways. His images often flirt with the surreal, finding something strange and beautiful within the seemingly ordinary.
Raised in a creative household in Delhi, alongside an applied artist father and a sculptor uncle, Vohra grew up in an environment where observing the world around him was second nature. This early exposure developed his sensitivity to form, light, and texture, although his eventual path into photography was driven by a desire to preserve moments and emotions that might otherwise be lost.
His early career took him through wildlife and fashion photography. His experience in the natural world, in particular, left a lasting impact, instilling a sense of patience that remains at the core of his practice today.
“Wildlife taught me humility,” he reflects. “You can spend hours waiting and still come back with nothing… The street is not very different. You cannot ask life to perform for your camera. You have to be patient, stay present, and wait for that tiny moment when everything comes together.”
In 2001, he decided to turn his attention fully towards the street. Inspired by painters including René Magritte, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Salvador Dalí, as well as cinema and the visual culture of India‘s street, Vohra developed an intuitive approach to photographing the world around him. Rather than searching for a particular kind of photograph, he allows the scene to reveal itself, relying on patience, awareness and instinct to recognise those brief moments when disparate elements suddenly fall into place.
“Observation comes before timing,” he notes. “The more you slow down and truly watch, the more the street begins to reveal itself… After years of photographing, intuition becomes almost physical. You see a glance, a movement or a small change in someone’s expression and something inside you says, now!”
Unsurprisingly, given the iconic artists who influenced his approach, Vohra brings a certain Surrealist sensibility to his work. He takes the familiar components of the street – pedestrians, buildings, reflections, shadows and passing vehicles – and finds relationships between them that might otherwise go unnoticed. A chance alignment or fleeting gesture can suddenly become the defining element of a photograph, turning an ordinary scene into something unexpected.
Over the years, Vohra’s unique eye has earned him international recognition. In 2015, he became the first Indian photographer to be named a Leica Ambassador, and his work has been published in numerous renowned publications, including National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and exhibited internationally.
For Vohra, however, photography extends beyond his own practice. As an educator and co-founder of APF Magazine, he has dedicated much of his career to mentoring aspiring photographers and sharing what he has learned along the way. “Photography was never meant to be a lonely journey,” he explains. “If I can help another photographer find confidence in their own way of seeing, that feels just as meaningful as making another photograph myself.”
It is this same philosophy that Vohra will bring to his role as judge of this year’s Street Photography Award. Rather than looking solely for technical perfection, he is interested in photographs that reveal something about the person behind the camera, their curiosity, their patience and their ability to notice what others might overlook. “I will be looking for photographs that make me feel something before they make me think about technique,” he says. “I want to see photographs where the photographer was truly present, where they noticed something that most of us would have walked past.”
All images © Vineet Vohra