Eka presents its latest exhibition, Nemai Ghosh – Satyajit Ray and Beyond at the Delhi Art Gallery, Hauz Khas, New Delhi. The show has been curated by Pramod Kumar KG. It is also DAG’s first photography exhibition.
Best known for his iconic images of the noted Bengali film director Satyajit Ray, Nemai Ghosh’s career in photography spanned the cultural universe of the latter half of the 20th century. One could be forgiven for assuming it was exlusively about Ray – after all, by his own admission, Ghosh was both fascinated and inspired by his charisma and energy. 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. 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. 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. One of Ghosh’s chief strengths lies in the way he managed to capture the “decisive moment” from the daily grind of shooting. “The most memorable of his images crystallized the point of a movie,” explains Pramod, adding, “offering us a fresh way of looking at films through the eyes of a photographer.”
Nemai Ghosh: Satyajit Ray And Beyond will be on view till 31st January 2013, 10.30am-7pm (Sundays closed), at the Delhi Art Gallery, 11, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi (46005300).