Payel is a documentary photographer and filmmaker, and Executive Director of Health Outreach International, an NGO providing free medical care to underserved communities.

Born in Rangpur, Bangladesh, she arrived in France at the age of five. Her gaze first took shape in that in-between, caught between two languages and two ways of inhabiting the world.

She spent several years in international project management, working on social and environmental impact in France and abroad, before turning to documentary photography to follow what has always driven her: the encounter, and what it takes to earn someone's trust long enough to tell their story honestly. Since 2022, she has volunteered with organizations supporting people in precarious situations, work that has shaped her documentary practice as much as any camera has.

Self-taught as a photographer, she owes her eye less to any school than to the hours spent simply looking, camera in hand or not. Years spent around dance, theatre, and cinema left their mark on how she sees: an eye trained on gesture, on presence, on whatever is happening in a frame just before the shutter closes.

Her work returns again and again to questions of social justice, gender, and belonging. She documents lives shaped by economic, political, and cultural forces. She works through immersion as she doesn't believe an honest image is possible without it.

Payel is based in Paris, where she continues to develop documentary photography and film projects around the world, alongside her work leading Health Outreach International.