Through A Lens, California Photographer Sej Saraiya Traces Cultures

India-West News Desk

LOS ANGELES, CA – When Atlas of Humanity opened its New York edition last week at One Art Space in Tribeca, it brought with it more than an exhibition. It carried a decade-long attempt to map human cultural diversity through photography, an evolving archive that now spans more than 400 ethnic groups across continents.

Conceived by photographer and curator Martin Vegas for the cultural nonprofit DeFactory, the project is inspired by UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Since its inception, Atlas of Humanity has brought together more than 100 photographers and traveled through cities including Cologne, Birmingham, Sharjah, Tunis, Paris, Milan, London, and New York.

Among the artists featured in the New York edition is California-based visual artist, filmmaker, and author Sej Saraiya, whose work focuses on Indigenous communities, ancestral traditions, and the environments that shape them.

Saraiya’s practice sits at the intersection of documentary photography and cultural preservation. Her images and films are rooted in extended periods of fieldwork, often in remote regions where language, geography, and access separate communities from global visibility. For her, the act of photographing is inseparable from the responsibility of witnessing.

‘Exhibitions like these exist because these stories matter. But so does how you tell them,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent months living with communities who don’t speak my language. That proximity is both a privilege and a responsibility.’

Born in India and trained in the United States, Saraiya holds an MFA from the University of Southern California. Her work has been profiled by ELLE as part of conservation photography and featured by Deadline for her role as founding director of the World Culture Film Festival. She has written for USA Today Magazine and the Hindustan Times, and published academic work in the STEAM Journal at Claremont Graduate University.

She is the author of ‘Becoming Still,’ a narrative nonfiction book set in Venezuela’s Indigenous Pemón territory. Her 2021 short film ‘The Curious Woods’ has screened internationally and received more than 30 awards, including honors for Best Environmental Film and Best Director.

Saraiya continues to work across photography and film in Indigenous and ecologically sensitive regions, including Northeast India and the Americas. Her ongoing projects examine how cultural memory is preserved, or erased, within rapidly changing landscapes.

More information: sejsaraiya.com.