Originally from West Bengal, Vicky Roy ran away from his home and started working as a rag picker at the New Delhi Railway Station, before he was rehabilitated by an NGO, Salaam Baalak Trust, Delhi. He studied photography at Triveni Kala Sangam and then apprenticed under Anay Mann. In 2007, he held his first solo exhibition titled, “Street Dream” at India Habitat Centre (New Delhi, India) supported by the British High Commission.

In 2008 he was selected by the US based Maybach Foundation to photo document the reconstruction of the World Trade Center in New York. As part of the program, he undertook a course in documentary photography at the International Center for Photography, New York.

His first monograph ‘Home Street Home’, published by the Nazar Foundation (New Delhi, India) was released at the second edition of the Delhi Photo Festival (Sept-Oct, 2013). His solo show “This Scarred Land: New Mountainscape” was exhibited at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, India in 2017. He was part of Houston FotoFest Biennnial and Kochi Muziris Biennale in 2018. ‘Scraping the Sky’ was exhibited at Asia Society Texas Centre in 2019.

He was awarded the MIT Media Fellowship in 2014 and listed as Forbes Asia 30 under 30 in 2016.