The world as we know is faced with an unprecedented crisis and India is fighting its battle bravely against COVID-19 to The Corona Virus. The Corona Virus is mainly transmitted via respiratory droplets and can also spread by touching contaminated surfaces.

This series of artworks is a coming together of the efforts of many with an intent to bring to light key persons or warriors (as we like to address them), that are risking their lives to serve and sustain the humans of our country.
We bring forth, expressions of how an infected environment may be perceived with the unseen danger lurking, created by internationally renowned photography-based artist, Priyal Thakkar, using photos from: Nationally Acclaimed, The Times Of India Press Photographer, SL Shanth Kumar; Professor & Director Of Anna University, Chennai, Dr. K Senthil Kumar Photography Archives, Seth GSMC and KEM Hospital (Mumbai) archieves.

PRIYAL THAKKAR

Priyal is a resourceful, talented and good-hearted person. Blessed in many ways, she believes life has been kind, always having good guides at her crucial moments. She believes in herself and has faith and trust in good and truth.
Creative since childhood, she took to painting in her teens and painted her way through management college, involved in several fine art activities. She then went onto study photography & digital imaging. She has worked as a commercial photographer for 9 years, (2009-2018)- running her company which was a photographers’ collective and also assisted photographers in Nairobi, Kenya. She has also taught photography at St. Xavier’ College to Mass Media students and conducted several photography workshops, outdoors and indoors, for beginners. Work lead to travel and photographing, and she discovered her calling of photography- based art, combining artistic elements (inspired by wedding album designing) with her monumental and spatial photographs, based on her experience of growing up around concepts of spaces all her life, invoking a feeling of augmented reality.

Thereafter, she participated in exhibitions across the country at galleries and currently at a top interiors store in the city of Mumbai- β€˜Vaishnavipratima- The Interiors Store’. Her art was exhibited at The New York Metropolitan Pavilion in 2018. She has also pursued an education in Indian Art History and Curatorial Studies. She thereafter worked as a research professional in a museum consultancy company, and worked part-time writing for a lifestyle magazine. She was also felicitated by the Iranian Government for her Research and photos on Irani Cafes in Mumbai city. She recently got featured by The See Me International Art Community as one of the top 100 artists in the world inΒ May, 2020 for her contribution to the Art Saves Humanity Conversation with her art. She now creates Covenant Digital Art, which is suggestive art on the premise of people and their spiritual promises and bonds encouraging them towards small pleasures of life which impact the world!

SL SHANTH KUMAR

With the purpose of photographing only for his daughter, National Award-winning photo journalist, with The Times Of India, SL Shanth Kumar originally from Kollam, has gone through a freak series of traumatic events, while growing up. From parents separating, to living with his father and physically abusive step-mother, to being sent away to an orphanage and being sexually harassed and finally living with his father in his teens and losing him, Shanth found his calling and leaning tricks of the trade, after doing a few odd jobs, while working as a tea-boy for a small passport photography studio in Bengaluru. and was luck-by-chance spotted by Amalnath Benedict Kumar, who mentored him and asked Shanth to shift to Mumbai by the newspaper and the rest is history.

A banana fruit seller at Kurla in Mumbai.
Fire brigade fighters carrying out sanitisation at Mumbai Central area.
Havaldar on duty checking vehicles for violation of laws at Kurla in Mumbai.
A COVID-19 screening OPD has been set up outside the casualty of Seth GSMC and KEMH.
Residents from all preclinical, paraclinical and clinical departments of Seth GSMC and KEM Hospital, Mumbai were at community service.
Police on duty checking temperature of passengers at Churchgate Station, Mumbai.
Drone operators spraying disinfectants in Chennai
People carrying out gas cylinders, at Parel, organised by the government.
COVID-19 Warriors- Road digging contract worker, who was at Kurla for cable wire repair work .
COVID-19 Warriors- Mumbai Police on duty punishing a local who broke the lockdown rules at CSMT.
Team KEMH at 7 Hills Quarantine Centre. Thirteen Months after the BMC shut down the Seven Hospital over non-payment of dues, the hospital reopened as Mumbai city’s biggest quarantine facility
BMC workers fumigating residential areas at Mahim
A civic worker at work without any safety precautions at Dongri, Mumbai.
BMC workers carrying on with Oriole sanitisation work, while some press photographers are trying to get photos for the news at CSMT.
A team of 13 interns and 2 residents from KEM Hospital, under the Department of Community Medicine have worked relentlessly in order to screen thousands of passengers for COVID-19 viral infection at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
A man incharge comes down after fixing the words for the day at St. Micheal’s Church, Mahim.
Local residents wait outside their colony to control people entering their area at Dharukhana.
A police officer on duty minding migrant workers while they wait in queue for free food distribution by an NGO at Worli in Mumbai
Orientation and Training Sessions for the Labour staff of Seth GSMC and KEM Hospital, organised by the Department of Community Medicine.