Biography

Ian Lockwood is an educator, photographer, and environmentalist with a passionate interest in the natural history, geography and cultures of South Asia. He was born in Kansas in 1970 and has old family roots in Boston, USA. The Lockwood clan has a long running love affair with India and its neighboring countries. Both sets of grandparents spent their careers in education in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Ian’s parents moved to South Asia three weeks after his birth and have been involved with appropriate technology projects and international education ever since.

Ian spent his formative years studying and exploring in the Palni Hills of Tamil Nadu where he attended Kodaikanal International School. He struggled with classroom learning but benefited from outdoor exposure and frequent adventures with his friends in the hills. Mentors, such as the naturalists Rom & Zai Whitaker, artists Bruce & Ann Peck and filmmakers Johnny & Louise Riber, taught him to let passion guide important life choices. In 1988 he went to the United States to study international relations and development economics at the College of Wooster. After graduation from college he worked with several South Asian NGOs on issues of biodiversity and sustainability. Finding his niche in education he completed a MEd from the College of New Jersey in 1998. He started his teaching career at AIS/Dhaka where he taught physical education, environmental science, social studies and photography for six years. Later he spent three years teaching and initiating sustainability initiatives at the Mahindra United World College of India near Pune. He is now living with his family in Sri Lanka where he teaches geography and environmental systems at the Overseas School of Colombo.

Ian’s photography has been influenced by his father, with whom he shares a love for Ansel Adams’ timeless documentation of the American West. In college he assisted the campus photographer Matt Dilyard and studied the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastião Salgado, Mary Ellen Mark and other notable social documentary photographers. Indian photographers such as Ragu Rai, MY Gorpade and TNA Perumal have inspired his work. Ian’s interest in wildlife and biodiversity trickled down from his father who has a PhD in entomology and nurtured orphaned chimpanzees while serving in the Peace Corps. In the early 1990s Ian motorcycled and trekked through the hill ranges and jungles of the southern Western Ghats. He was awed by the splendor of the landscape but concerned for the future of the ancient mountains in the face of increasing anthropocentric pressure. In 1993 after a rewarding visit to Kerala’s High Range, he became fixated on documenting the little-known landscapes and endangered species of the Western Ghats. This eventually lead to a series of magazine publications and exhibitions that aimed to raise awareness about, what was then, a little known area of India.

Ian’s writing and photographs have appeared in several Indian, Asian and European publications including Asian Geographic, Geographische Rundschau, Frontline, Gallerie, Outlook Traveler and Sanctuary Asia. Ian’s first solo photographic exhibition entitled Alo Chaiya (Sunlight & Shadows) was held at the Drik Gallery in Dhaka, Bangladesh in November 2000. His exhibition the Western Ghats: Portrait & Panorama was held at New Delhi’s India International Centre and Mumbai’s Bombay Natural History Society in 2001. Both the Bangladesh and India exhibitions sought to raise public awareness about declining biodiversity in little known areas. The images were hand printed by Ian in his darkroom and combined with text and maps to illustrate important themes. He continues to focus on the Western Ghats and is currently exploring links between Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands and the Ghats.