Eli Mastaine (legal: Elvis Mastaine, 1996) is an independent humanist photographer and mixed media print practitioner from Imphal (Manipur), a land in far North-Eastern India. Although he has a paternal residency as home in Imphal, he considers it as a temporary shelter.
For him he grew up as a nomad, he chose to be identified as nomad, as for him he believes in his mother's teaching "A home is what we make of: an emotional sanctuary shaped by love, personal choices, memories, sacrifices and the people inside it." 

A part of him is deeply motivated by the vague emotions and the possibilities of dreams, while the other half compels him to preserve an authentic relationship with the mundane everyday life and human experiences. In a state of dichotomy, a need to satisfy both his contradictory impulses births and grows everyday.

He started photographing for local print publication and events while being based at Guwahati sometime in mid 2016, later in 2018 he moved to Delhi continuing his work and pursued his M.A in Journalism and Mass Communication, soon after he started working for creative/advertising agencies in 2021. In the start of 2023 he moved to his paternal home and is currently practicing photography and printmaking from there, undertaking some long thought self-supported projects in the form of social documentary around his immediate neighborhoods, the capital region and among the communities. He is an autodidact darkroom and print practitioner.

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Personal​

He grew up in various towns and cities of India and in his young adult years, he took a fascination with stories of passion of common people, alternative-cultures in quiet places and struggles for Individual identity, these compelled him to go out with a camera and make photographs. He picked up a camera not from his fascination from the photographic world, but from the world of paintings and his failure to pursue visual art after leaving high school.

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Growing up he had always felt an impending stifle between traditional societal norms and personal values, the unseen pressure to fit into the mainstream dominant culture and it's influence on carefree self-expression.

 

Now an adult, as a form of self-expression, acceptance and defiance; he tries to incorporate aspects of those and everything in between through his personal work.​

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He has a Master of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication with forte in Visual Communication, he has also worked with creative agencies as a creative professional before committing full time to the holistic practice of photography and printmaking.

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He often enjoys fixing and using ignored and unloved cameras. In order to master the whole photographic chain, he recently began creating his own chemicals. Outside of his homemade darkroom and the idea of practicing photography, he likes slap-stick and dark humour, poetry, meeting people who also share similar passion and he has a personal special interest in alternative & counter-culture.

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For him, photography and visual art irrespective of genre, format or medium is an infinite playground, where everyone can contribute something that can inspire a change, or at-least an action.