Photographer Nemai Ghosh?s vignettes of Satyajit Ray, his cinema and its ecosystem provide piercing insights into the work as well as the mind of the great film maker
?During his long years of work with (Satyajit) Ray, (Nemai) Ghosh was the sole photographer permitted on the sets with the maestro confessing on seeing his first pictures, ??you have done it exactly the way I would have, man, you have got the same angles!?? writes Pramod Kumar KG in his note on the photo exhibition he has curated. Nemai Ghosh: Satyajit Ray and Beyond, on till January 28 at the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) in the capital, showcases 250 vignettes captured by Ghosh?s lens and most of them, of course, are those of Satyajit Ray, his film shoots, his actors, his magical cinematic world that dwarfed every other director for Ghosh. It was a bond, a relationship of more than 25 years between Ray and Ghosh, who came to be known as Ray?s photographer, with his camera framing the point where cinema meets life, albeit with almost singular devotion to Indian cinema?s one true magician. DAG has plans to take the exhibition to Mumbai and Kolkata and also plans to tie up with foreign galleries and museums.
Ghosh?s work is a treasure trove of innumerable pictorial biographies of the auteur Ray in action, calling every shot, controlling every move on the set, engrossed in editing, using his creative genius to work on character sketches and costume designs, or spending those long and lonely hours in the recording studio working on the scores for his films. His camera seamlessly enters the most animated, intense as well as pensive, moments of Ray?s journey as a master film maker, often making Ray an integral part of the composition, a lens behind Ray?s own. Exquisite on-location stills from some of Ray?s iconic films, in both Bengali and Hindi?from Ghare Baire, Ashani Sanket and Seemabaddha to Shatranj ke Khilari?absorb the viewer, transporting him to the set, as vivid images, sounds and chatter of a film set conjure up effortlessly in the mind. The simplest art has the power to inspire more complex and engaging interpretations. Ghosh?s work is a case in point.
The extent of Ghosh?s devoted obsession with Ray and cinema in general can be gauged from the fact that his archival collection has no less than 1,20,000 images, which was acquired by DAG in 2006, and has been catalogued and digitised. It?s an extensive chronicle of the history of Bengali and Indian cinema of the last quarter of the 20th century. ?Although the major peg of the exhibition is 100 years of Indian cinema, for me personally, it was about bringing out the brilliant photographer in Nemai Ghosh. Of course, you can?t have Ghosh without Ray and you can?t have Ray without cinema,? says Kumar, adding that while cataloguing and digitising the mammoth collection, the team at DAG started working on a curatorial framework which eventually resulted into this exhibition.
?The fact is that both Ray and Ghosh were brilliant photographers and had a great understanding of each other?s work. Each recognised the genius of the other. No one could have captured Ray?s cinematic world the way Ghosh did,? adds Kumar. And the master film maker was well aware of that. Savour this excerpt from the coffee-table book that was released as part of the exhibition: ?In Ray?s own words, ?For close to 25 years, Nemai Ghosh has been assiduously photographing me in action and repose?a sort of Boswell working with a camera rather than a pen. In so far these pictures rise above mere records and assume a value as examples of a photographer?s art, they are likely to be of interest to a discerning viewer. I hope Nemai?s efforts will not go in vain.?? Ghosh, on his part, often describes his camera?s devotion to Ray with the word ?trance?.
?I learnt discipline, honesty and sincerity from him and in spite of working so closely with him for over 25 years, he never asked me to take a shot in a particular way. My working relationship with him was completely unobtrusive and comfortable,? says Ghosh. And did he ever make suggestions to Ray about the way he shot his films? ?Never. Both of us never intruded in each other?s sphere,? responds Ghosh.
But Ghosh, now 79, was no ace photographer when he started out. In fact, he had no prior training in photography and, if one may say so, was more of an accidental photographer. It was sometime around 1967-68 when Ghosh held a camera for the first time, one he had received from a friend in lieu of a loan. And while he began his career with Ray ?rather undefined?, the production of Pratidwandi in 1970 made Ghosh the official unit still photographer and was from then on acknowledged in Ray?s films under the title ?stills?. And accidental it might have been, but photography changed Ghosh?s life.
Etched on the wall at the exhibition is Ghosh?s admission on his passionate relationship with the camera, which is no more a mere object but an element in his life: ?I must admit, the camera is no longer something outside my existence, distinct from me, it is a part of my person. Just like sensory organs, I can see many things better with my eyes behind the lens.? Ghosh?s intimacy with the subjects of his photographs and with photographic art itself is evident from the stills of film shoots on display. Much like most of Ray?s cinema, Ghosh?s photography reflects a realist honesty about subjects usually associated with the magic of cinema. This facet of his photography, though consistently present throughout the collection on display, is at its prominent best in the actors? portraits that are incredibly simple in composition and brutally honest in expression. The Sharmila Tagore of yesteryears pips any other actor as the collection is replete with elegant yet candid images of the actor. While Ray was the one focal point and a dominant influence on Ghosh?s photographic work, he certainly wasn?t a limiting influence as Ghosh?s body of work certainly goes beyond Ray himself. A part of the exhibition showcases his work on the sets of films by other directors and many portrait shots of actors, both from Bengali as well as mainstream and parallel genres of Hindi cinema. Ghosh is a relieved man today, content that his mammoth archival collection is now being taken care of and preserved by DAG for there was a time when the veteran photographer had almost decided to dump all his 1,20,000 images in the Ganges if he couldn?t find any takers. But fortunately for him, and for lovers of cinema and photography, it didn?t come to that. Both DAG and Ghosh are confident that a number of exhibitions based on his work will now see the light of day. ?I have a large body of work on the theatre of Bengal. I would want to see an exhibition based on that theme,? says Ghosh, who, interestingly, used to be a theatre actor before his accidental fling with photography.
Ghosh?s work is an ode to a towering master of filmcraft and to Indian cinema itself. For a century, the magic of cinema has seeped silently yet substantially into the life of this country. Ghosh has spent decades of his life capturing that magic, while still in the making.
