Pablo Bartholomew is a self-taught photographer who learnt his first lessons in photography at home.
In his early teens he photographed, in the documentary tradition, family, friends, people, and cities. At age 19 he was awarded the first prize by the World Press Photo for his series on morphine addicts
Pablo Bartholomew now works as an independent photographer and is based in New Delhi, India. His current project is a continuation of a series begun in 1987 in which he had documented Indian émigrés in the US. Since 2009 he has photographed Indians in France, Mauritius, and more recently in Leicester in the UK.
In 1984 he won the World Press Photo "Picture of the Year" award for his image of the dead, half-buried body of a child victim of the disastrous Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
Between 2001 and 2003, with the intention of mentoring a younger generation of Indian photographers, he ran workshops in New Delhi with the support of the World Press Photo Foundation.
His first solo exhibitions, featuring work that captured the marginal, fringe worlds in which he lived, were held at Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi (1979) and at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay (1980).
More recently, in July 2007, "Outside In: A Tale of Three Cities", a visual diary of his teenage work was shown at Les Rencontres d'Arles. The show traveled to the National Museum in New Delhi in January 2008, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in March 2008, Bodhi Art in New York in May 2008, and to Bodhi Berlin in March 2009 in conjunction with the Berlinale.
Mr. Bartholomew's work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and photography festivals all over the world. Most notably at "Another Asia" at the Nooderlicht Photo Festival in Netherlands (2006), Chobimela, Dhaka (2006), Angkor Photo Festival, Cambodia (2006), Month of Photography, Tokyo (2007), Les Rencontres d'Arles, Arles, (2007), "Private Spaces Public Spaces", Newark Museum, USA (2007), "Act of Faith" at the Nooderlicht Photo Festival, Netherlands (2007), Bodhi Art, New York (2008), Bodhi Berlin (2009), Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2009), "Where Three Dreams Cross", Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010), and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2010), Sakshi Art Gallery, Mumbai (2011), and Fishbar Gallery, London (2011). Photoink, New Delhi (2012), Art Chennai, India (2012) , Head On Photo Festival, Sydney, Australia (2012), Angkor Photo Festival, Cambodia (2012), Shanghai Bienalle (2012), Chobimela VII 2013
Since 2007, Mr. Bartholomew has been working intensely with his father's archive of photographs. In 2008, he co-conceived and co-curated "A Critic's Eye", an exhibition of photographs by Richard Bartholomew, which coincided with his solo show at Sepia Gallery in New York. "A Critic's Eye" then moved to PhotoInk Gallery, New Delhi, where it showed from January to April 2009. The eponymous photobook was released to mark the occasion. A third show was held at Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai in February 2010. Later that year, Bartholomew organized another showing of his father's work alongside his own "Outside In" series at the Harrington Street Art Centre, and, in September 2011, at Fishbar Gallery in London and most recently at Chobimela VII in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2013.
Richard Bartholomew's photographs have been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, and by private collectors. In November 2011, select artist portraits were on display at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York.
Continuing work on his archive of the 70s and 80s, in February 2011 he showed 119 works at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, as part of "Chronicles of a Past Life", the sequel to "Outside In". This body of work reflected his engagement with the streets of Bombay in the 70s and the 80s. The show opened at PhotoInk in New Delhi in January 2012. A third body of work from that period called the "Calcutta Diaries" which is the focus is on his time spent in Kolkata. Divided into four sections, explores documentation of the Chinese community in Tangra, the city's streets, his time spent on the sets of Satyajit Ray's "Shatranj Ke Khilari" and his grandmother was shown at the Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi in December 2012.
In September 2012, he launched a 640 page book of his father's writings on Contemporary Indian Art between the years, 1950s to 1980s. The book titled "Richard Bartholomew - The Art Critic" took 15 years to put together and chronicles the untold story of the birth of Modern Indian Art.