Vivek Singh: His Passing, and His People-Centric Journalism

A Colleague Recalls His Talent, Larger-Than-Life Vision and the Guts to Back It Up

July 5, 2025

Screenshot from Facebook

Vivek Singh, a fearless and thoughtful photojournalist whose camera often stood witness in places the rest of the country ignored, passed away on June 28 after a period of illness. The funeral is scheduled to take place on July 6.

For over 20 years, Vivek focused on conflict, migration, displacement and people left out of public attention. He stayed with stories over time and did not chase spectacle. He spent years working in Northeast India, especially Manipur, returning many times to document people and histories rarely included in the mainstream record, and to report from places few other journalists reached.

While many journalists turned their attention to Manipur after the violence involving Kuki-Zo tribals and the Meitei community began on May 3, 2023, Vivek had been visiting the state, especially Churachandpur district and surrounding areas, for over a decade. Few understood the roots of the unrest as he did. However, his illness kept him from returning, and that weighed heavily on him.

In Assam, he documented the conflict between indigenous Bodo communities and Bengali-speaking Muslims, rooted in long-standing tensions over land ownership and settlement. The Bodos, who hold land collectively, saw the arrival of Muslim settlers – many seeking private titles – as a threat to their way of life. Vivek returned also to this region many times, building trust in places few others could access. His photographs did not cast people as victims or villains but showed the complexity of the conflict. The work earned him the Manuel Rivera Grant for Documentary Photography in 2013 and was later exhibited at Galerie Huit in Arles, France, in 2014.

Vivek’s work was never limited to the Northeast though.

That same year, he collaborated with The Caravan magazine on a project in Melghat, Madhya Pradesh, documenting the Korku tribal community. The region, known for high rates of malnutrition and neglect, presented a different kind of crisis, one marked by silence and state apathy rather than open conflict. The photographs and accompanying text from the year-long project offered a rare view into the lives of a community often ignored in public discourse.

Vivek also reported on rape survivors in Maharashtra, a Baptist pastor’s fight against HIV/AIDS in Nagaland, honour killings in Haryana, pellet injuries in Kashmir, and drug-resistant tuberculosis in Uttar Pradesh. While any journalist can list the issues they’ve covered, in Vivek’s case, this meant long-form, detailed and immersive work, often carried out over months or even years.

His work appeared in several international outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed News, The Globe and Mail, Der Spiegel and Columbia Journalism Review. While his bylines increased over the years, he remained committed to careful listening and long-form reporting, including from Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Another rare thing about Vivek was that many of his most important projects were self-funded. This showed how strongly he cared about the issues he chose, often working in a selfless manner. He returned to the places he had photographed not because newspapers had given him more assignments, but because the work, for him, felt unfinished.

Newsreel Asia spoke to a few of Vivek’s colleagues, who were also his friends – because that’s how he worked – to share their memories of him and the time they spent together.

Fellow photojournalist Ruhani Kaur recalled, “While Vivek and I had drifted our own ways lately, in the time I spent as his friend cum peer what stood out for me was his immense talent, a larger than life vision and guts to back it up. His long-term projects on the North-east pan many chapters and is a work that was built laboriously, building deep ties within the community, winning their trust over years. He would return every time, more often than not self-funded without the backing or commitment of media houses.

“While some of his collaborative endeavours didn’t always shape up the way they were set out, he was always a risk taker who worked the hardest in the team for what he believed in. He was so secure of his talent which showed in his generosity in reaching out when he felt you needed it, even sharing assignments and clients and above all feeling happy for you when you did well, that is so rare in our profession.”

Journalist Riyaz Wani said, “He wasn’t just a fine photographer, he was a fine human being.”

In August 2019, just days after the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, Vivek arrived in the Valley not with his camera out, but with a book in hand—Sumantra Bose’s Contested Lands—seeking a deeper understanding before documenting the moment, Wani recalled, describing him as someone with rare warmth and sincerity.

“He cared deeply about people and the stories he told,” he said.

His instinct for complexity and refusal to simplify is something his friend and peer Avinash Giri recalls as central to Vivek’s character.

“He wasn’t just an incredible photojournalist—he lived photography and felt journalism deeply,” he said.

Conversations between them veered from politics and photography to gossip and self-doubt, with Vivek always encouraging him to go beyond his comfort zone. “He wasn’t easy for everyone to like, but impossible to dislike for long,” he said.

Vivek’s roots in the army – his father and grandfather both served – may have shaped his ease in conflict zones and high-pressure assignments, but he was never a detached observer. He remained objective and held no bias toward the armed forces.

In later years, Vivek moved between Delhi and Mumbai, editing, mentoring and continuing to shoot. He played an editorial role at the StoriesAsia media, where he encouraged long-form, slow journalism even as the industry tilted toward speed and surface. Though he often preferred being behind the camera, many knew him as a quietly persuasive editor and an instinctive storyteller.

Vivek Singh’s passing is a loss to journalism, and to a kind of reporting that requires patience, courage and empathy.

He is survived by his parents, his wife, Simran, and their school-going daughter, all of whom he loved deeply, as well as his friends, colleagues and the many people he let into his life and work.