Shreya Sahai is a Manhattan-based photographer, filmmaker, and writer. She was born in 1997 in Jharkhand, India and grew up in Delhi, India. By the time she turned fourteen years old, she had held four solo exhibitions at AIFACS Gallery, Delhi, she was a national level scholar in Hindustani style violin, and her photograph of the 2009 total solar eclipse was picked up by news and photography agencies around the world like National Geographic, AP, and BBC.
After graduating from school, she worked as a writer for the Times of India, an actor and educator at the Barry John Acting Studio (Delhi), and a writer-editor-translator for IYCWorld. As a founding member of Darakht theatre group, she did numerous plays and a few films while designing posters and doing backstage photography for the group. Her directorial debut Starboy (2020), shot in one room with a primary cast of one, made it to the top 100 list at IFP's 50 Hour Film Challenge Season IX.
Her interest in history, culture, and languages lead her to spend time in Korea, China, Myanmar, and the UK.
She graduated from Amity University (Online) with a BA in English and the International Center of Photography's Creative Practices programme in 2022, and from ICP's Documentary Practices and Visual Journalism programme in 2023.