29/08/2026
AHMED ALI
AT WORK (1948-1978)
Preview
Saturday, 05 September, 2026
6 to 9 pm
To mark 25 years of PHOTOINK, we are pleased to present the exhibition, At Work (1948–1978) by Ahmed Ali—the inaugural exhibition of the photographer’s four-decade work on industry and labour.
Ahmed Ali (1923–2016) was the most prolific industrial photographer of his generation in India. This is a vast and largely unseen archive: over a hundred thousand negatives made across four decades, spanning commissioned work, advertising, studio portraiture, and a decade spent photographing the Bastar region, among much else. Industrial photographs form perhaps the most sustained body of work within this wider archive; At Work draws out this account of the men and women who built and ran India’s emergent industrial economy.
His photographs of India’s industrial landscape privilege a diverse workforce, showing both the intense concentration of the subterranean collier and the delicate precision of the laboratory technician. Close inspection of these portraits reveals Ali's deliberate compositional practice: he stages each encounter to isolate and illuminate the workers’ concentration and skill. These carefully choreographed moments—far from diminishing the authenticity of the labour—underscore his profound humanism and commitment to presenting workers as dignified, embodied subjects.
PHOTOINK
