Chiiz: The New Delhi Photography Magazine Built Around Its Contributors
Chiiz is a photography magazine and platform based in New Delhi, India, created to give photographers the visibility its founder felt the industry denied them. The Chiiz photography magazine was launched in April 2017, two months after the Chiiz.com platform itself, and it publishes themed volumes built around genres such as travel, street, portrait, wedding, maternity and baby photography. Each issue is a showcase: portfolios and photo essays by photographers from India and around the world, presented with the photographer's name and craft at the centre rather than as illustration to someone else's story.
Chiiz is more than a magazine. Around the title its founders built a photography business and community that includes photo contests, workshops, photo tours, exhibitions and studio and stock-photography services. That ecosystem reflects its founding insight: emerging photographers need a platform, an audience, professional connections and ways to earn, and a magazine can be the visible heart of all four.
Overview
Chiiz presents itself as a platform for budding photographers that grew into a professional network. The magazine is its flagship product: themed, image-led volumes in which each issue takes a genre or subject and fills it with work by many photographers, accompanied by text, interviews and technique details, including the camera settings behind individual images. Early volumes quickly established the pattern: volume 2 addressed maternity photography, volume 5 travel photography, volume 6 wedding photography, volume 8 street photography and volume 12 portrait photography, and the series continued to at least volume 24.
Reviewers of photography magazines have noticed the title's approach. A widely used guide to photography magazines describes Chiiz as an Indian publication catering to aspiring photographers, focused on descriptive photography, and containing motivating stories of photographers living and working in different parts of the planet. That combination, showcase plus story, is the magazine's signature: readers see the pictures and meet the people who made them.
History and Founding
Chiiz was founded by Mukesh Kumar. In an interview about the company's origins, he explained that the idea came from his own experience as a photographer. Photographs from his trip to Kasol were shortlisted by a renowned photography magazine, and he supplied his best shots as requested. When the magazine finally reached him, however, his name appeared in the smallest possible type, even though the story was based on his photographs. The disappointment, he said, gave birth to Chiiz: he had always felt the need for a platform where one could find photographers, models and the right equipment, connect with photography enthusiasts and showcase one's talent.
The build was methodical. Work on the technology began in August 2016. The team was assembled in January 2017. Chiiz.com, the platform for budding photographers, launched in February 2017, and the Chiiz Photography Magazine followed in April 2017. A Chiiz Photography Contest launched in June 2017, and the company's first international photo tour took place in November 2017. Early milestones also included work around the Pushkar Photo Fair and, in January 2018, a fine art and figure study photography workshop. Within eighteen months, the founder reported, the platform had brought more than ten thousand users on board, run more than ten photo tours and participated in numerous exhibitions and trade shows.
Publisher and Business Model
The magazine's issues carry the imprint Published by Mansa Inc., with content provided through Chiiz. The platform's revenue, as its founder described it, comes from services rather than from magazine sales alone: a 360-degree photography market solution, royalties from stock photography, magazine sales, travels and workshops, and studio rental. That diversified model is why Chiiz is best understood as a photography company that publishes a magazine, rather than as a conventional publishing house.
The magazine nevertheless behaves like a proper periodical, with an editorial team credited in its issues. A later volume's masthead lists editorial, chief visualisation, design and research and operations roles, and individual issues credit guest editors drawn from the photography community. The street photography issue, volume 8, was guest edited by Vineet Vohra, a well-known figure in Indian street photography, lending the showcase the authority of a practitioner-curator.
Editorial Content and Themed Volumes
Chiiz organises its magazine by theme, with each volume devoted to a genre. The portrait volume, titled Faces, incorporated work by photographers from several countries, with monochrome portraiture, Indian street portraiture and boudoir photography among its strands, and an editorial that promised readers untold stories in the faces people wear. The street photography volume shared stories deliberately different from mainstream concepts, its guest editor reflecting that everyone walks the same lanes a hundred times without seeing what is in front of them, and that street photographers try to capture human engagement as moments unfold.
Other volumes show the breadth of the commercial and artistic photography world the magazine serves. The baby photography volume, volume 22, ranged across maternity, birth and baby photography, wildlife and nature work, a photo project on mothers' bodies, and makeup artistry, while explaining the special skills and safety responsibilities involved in photographing fragile newborn subjects. The travel volume included accessible travel for people with disabilities among its features, and the maternity volume mixed personal essays on solo travel with portfolio work. Technique is not neglected: images are frequently published with their exposure details, turning the showcase into informal instruction.
Language and Readership
Chiiz publishes in English, addressing India's English-reading photography community and the international contributors and readers its volumes attract. Its photographers and subjects come from India and around the world, and its editorial voice is that of a community magazine rather than a newsroom: encouraging, contributor-led and focused on craft and careers.
Its core readership is the aspiring and early-career photographer: students, hobbyists turning professional, wedding and portrait practitioners, and enthusiasts who follow genres such as street, travel and fine art photography. For such readers the magazine performs three services at once. It is inspiration, in its portfolios; instruction, in its settings, stories and workshops; and opportunity, since being published in a themed volume is itself a credential a young photographer can show clients.
Contests, Workshops and Photo Tours
The magazine's surrounding activities are integral to its identity. The Chiiz Photography Contest launched in June 2017, within months of the magazine, giving contributors a competitive route into visibility. Workshops followed, including a January 2018 workshop on muses, fine art and figure study photography, and the company ran photo tours, beginning with a first international photo tour in November 2017 and reporting more than ten tours in its first eighteen months, alongside exhibitions and trade shows and an early association with the Pushkar Photo Fair.
These activities feed the magazine and are fed by it. Tours and workshops generate portfolios and stories; contests surface new contributors; published photographers become the community's mentors and judges. The founder credited the platform's early growth to exactly this combination of a tireless team, photography mentors and supporters who helped shape Chiiz's direction.
Print and Digital Editions
Chiiz volumes circulate digitally as page-turning editions through platforms where its issues can be read as complete magazines, and through its own magazine site, magazine.chiiz.com, alongside the main chiiz.com platform. Complete volumes, including the travel, street, portrait and baby photography issues, are preserved on document and flipbook platforms, showing a consistent design: a themed cover, contributor portfolios, editorial pages and a credits and disclaimer page asserting that all photographs are published with the artists' authorisation and protected under copyright law.
The magazine has also entered the world of photography publishing records: a later volume, Chiiz Photography Magazine volume 24, is catalogued by the photography platform LensCulture as a book with its own ISBN, 978-81-939076-3-4. That step, from digital magazine to ISBN-catalogued volume, reflects the collectible, portfolio character of its issues.
Notable Contributors
Chiiz's contributors are its content, and its issues credit them prominently, which was the founder's founding complaint addressed in practice. The portrait volume featured photographers including Wolf Ademite, Erich Caparas, JP Stones, Leroy Skalstad and Marco Vendittelli, monochrome work by Vedat Satilmis and Puneet Jain, Indian street portraiture by Harshawardhan Nevkar and boudoir photography by Suniel Marathe. The baby photography volume included nature photographer Varun Aditya and the work of Ami Vitale among its contents, with an editorial team led by named editors, visualisers and designers.
Guest editors are a recurring device. Vineet Vohra's guest editorship of the street photography volume is the clearest example of Chiiz borrowing authority from, and returning visibility to, a respected practitioner. For contributors, appearing alongside such names in a themed international volume is the platform working exactly as intended.
Recent Developments
Chiiz has continued as a photography company spanning magazine, workshops, photo tours and contests, with an active presence as an employer and trainer of photography and media interns in New Delhi. Its volumes have continued to appear and to be catalogued internationally, and its back issues remain widely read on digital magazine platforms, where the themed volumes function as durable genre showcases rather than dated news.
The idea that launched Chiiz in 2017 remains relevant in a social-media age. Feeds give photographers exposure without permanence or credit discipline; a magazine gives them a curated, credited, themed publication. By building that magazine inside a working photography business of tours, workshops, contests and services, Chiiz created a model in which the publication and the profession sustain each other, and in which the photographer's name is printed, deliberately, where readers will see it.
