Faces and Facets

DAG’s sustained engagement with the visual archive of Satyajit Ray extends through Faces and Facets: Satyajit Ray in Colour— an exhibition devoted exclusively to the colour photographs of Nemai Ghosh. In an earlier exhibition, Nemai Ghosh: Satyajit Ray and Beyond, Ghosh’s iconic black-and-white images were foregrounded—intimate portraits of Ray, evocative film stills and select glimpses from the sets of Ray and contemporaries such as Gautam Ghosh, Aparna Sen, Shyam Benegal amongst others. While that constellation of work situated Ray within a wider cinematic fraternity, the present body of work adopts a more concentrated lens: Ray alone, rendered entirely in colour.

If black-and-white distilled the filmmaker into tonal contrasts and sculptural gravitas, colour restores atmosphere and immediacy. It brings forth the warmth of interiors, the modulations of light across surfaces, and the subtle textures of the environments within which Ray conceived his films. We encounter him not only as the celebrated auteur but as a thinking, working presence—writing, sketching, directing, listening—immersed in the disciplined orchestration of his craft. The chromatic register underscores the painterly sensibility he cultivated at Santiniketan, suggesting a continuity between his visual training and cinematic compositions.

Ghosh’s twenty-five-year association with Ray, beginning on the sets of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, was marked by rare artistic consonance. Ray’s acknowledgment of Ghosh’s instinct for “the same angles” affirms the depth of their shared vision. In these colour images, Ghosh moves beyond documentation to interpretation, capturing moments of introspection and authority with equal sensitivity.

Together, the photographs offer a luminous meditation on Ray’s presence—at once monumental and intimate—inviting viewers to encounter him anew through the quiet radiance of colour.