Photo Essay | Accidental genius

During his 25 years of association with Satyajit Ray, Ghosh took thousands of stills of Ray and his cast on locations. Ghosh, whom Ray described as “a sort of Boswell working with a camera rather than a pen”, became an obsessive chronicler of the life and works of one of the greatest film-makers of all time. Having sifted through nearly 120,000 photographs from Ghosh’s burgeoning archive (which the Delhi Art Gallery, or DAG, acquired in 2006), curator Pramod Kumar K.G. has selected around 250 which will be on display at DAG from Tuesday. Timed for the 100 years of Indian cinema, the show brings together a range of photographs—iconic, rare and never-seen-before—mostly of Ray and his actors, with occasional glimpses of other directors. “Many of these images are iconic through visual recall,” says Pramod, “but seldom do people know the person who made them.” This is ironic, if not unfortunate, since Ghosh is perhaps unique in the field of photography for the kind of work he has produced for years, for little or no remuneration most of the time. Read More

Nemai Ghosh: Satyajit Ray And Beyond will be on from 8-28 January, 10.30am-7pm (Sundays closed), at the Delhi Art Gallery, 11, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi (46005300).

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