Abhijit Patil
Biography
Abhijit Patil is a photographer and farmer based in Muradpur, Ratnagiri, in the Western Ghats of India. With a degree in Economics from Pune University and formal training in photography from Fergusson College, Pune. He has worked as a photojournalist with leading media outlets including India Today, The Times of India Group, Sakal Publications, and AFP.
Abhijit's work explores the interconnected themes of food, labor, biodiversity, and the climate crisis. Living and working alongside his community, he cultivates a diverse range of native crops such as khamdi (red rice variety), jondhali jirga (fragrant rice variety), turmeric, toor (pigeon pea), mango ginger, and ragi (finger millet) and other millets. On his farm, Samarasa Van in Morde, Ratnagiri, he runs a community seed library and is actively engaged in ecological restoration.
In collaboration with the Nature Conservation Foundation and the Sahyadri Sankalp Society, he is developing a restoration site of 74 rare native evergreen tree species as part of the Hornbill Habitat Restoration Project, contributing to the conservation of the region’s fragile biodiversity.
He has been part of the Shifting Studios residency at TIFA (Pune), and the Creative Lab: Art in Public Space by Maraa and Primary (Bangalore), where he further explored the intersections of art, ecology, and public engagement.
His photo series Rojandari earned him the Media Foundation of India Award, while Male Gaze was recognized by the Democratic Youth Foundation.
Abhijit is the founder of Sadakchhap, a guerrilla-style public art intervention project that questions which stories are told, and who gets to tell them. To date, more than 80 artists have participated in four exhibitions under its banner.
He also serves as the curator of the Seed Stories project, initiated by the Goethe-Institute Pune. This collaborative initiative brings together artists, seed savers, and researchers to reclaim the cultural and ecological significance of native seeds, positioning them as living repositories of resilience and hope.
He is a visiting faculty for photography at Pune university and Devrukh college of Art and Design.