[1][2][3][4][5] Abul's photographic works are predominantly autobiographical and expose the areas of politics, culture, contemporary history, gender and eroticism.

Abul was born in Kerala (24 September 1964) to a migrant family from Tamil Nadu and was brought up in Mattancherry, the historical heart of Kochi.

Abul's talents as a photographer was evident from childhood and he joined as an apprentice in a hometown studio to develop his skills.

During the 1980s he set up 'Zen studio' at Mattancherry and started working with many prominent news agencies, newspapers, and in periodicals in India and Abroad.

The collective space comprised Mayalokam studio, Lila gallery, Masala company design store and Badal, an alternate shop.

Prominent artists and academicians like Ajayan Namboothri, Jose Manuel Val, Bawa Chelladurai, Suresh Jayaram, Vivek Vilasini, Dr. Rajan Gurukal took part in the fortnight long art festival which included film screenings, book reading sessions, plays, art exhibitions and seminars.

Here Abul Kalam Azad initiated the formation of Ekalokam Trust for Photography which was registered as a non-profit foundation in the year 2013, co-founded by Kulanthivel and Tulsi Swarna Lakshmi.

2017 & 2018 India Foundation for the Arts Grantee 2012 – 2014 Senior Fellowship, Ministry of Culture, Government of India 1995 Charles Wallace Award for Masters in the UK 1994 French Government Scholarship for higher studies in photography Using the medium of Analog photography, Azad documents his personal and social life.

His works could largely be associated with the place he lives, the social-political dynamics of the period, the technological advancement etc., and very much pertains to the local culture and historical context.

The portraits’ cut and closed up textures of life become biographical with the manual scribbling, thus making a statement on the individual history of the ‘ant hill’—‘people of a nation’.

[28][29] Black Mother – 'Heroine of Silappathikaram' done during the period from 2000 to 2003, on his return to Kerala after a stay outside, depicts the female oracles at the time of the festival at the Devi temple at Kodungalloor which is related according to local legends to the myth of Kannaki.

The story relates how Kannaki took revenge on the early Pandyan King of Madurai, for a mistaken death penalty imposed on her husband Kovalan, by cursing the city with disaster.

Black Mother series reveal the inherent drama of this frozen movement – the supreme Goddess and her worshipers in a trance.

Though the atmosphere is charged and overwrought with a kind of high-strung atavistic fervour, the images of these women in their redemptive bodily movements of self-mortification, have hardly any religious awe about them'.

It is an ode to eminent people like Gandhiji, Nataraja Guru, M. G. Ramachandran, Kumaran Asan, P. Krishna Pillai, my mother ... who have left an indelible stamp on the social, cultural and political sphere.

'Carefully chosen the tell-tale images of times gone by, of memories that rankle and rant, of disappeared loves, of homes that once held sway, of men that mattered, of women who ruled, of hearths and hearts, of ideologies, of blood, sweat and tears and of emotions that have never let go of the artist the `Untouchables' is a veritable emotional journey.

A journey that troubles just as it tells the lives and times of India, of Kerala and of closer home, Mattancherry', says Priyadarsshini Sharma in The Hindu.

[32][33][34] Ram Rahman[35][36] well known photographer, designer and curator says, 'Azad shoots like a maniac – his frantic camera is an extension of an eye driven by a fevered mind.

150 images from various series of Abul Kalam Azad has been featured in the ten different notebooks published by Ekalokam Collective, in the year 2013.