Nemai Ghosh

Photographer Nemai Ghosh has been the quintessential Satyajit Ray biographer through his decades-long close association with the master filmmaker. Over a lifetime of work, he has built up a vast and valuable photographic archive, now housed at DAG.

To mark the occasion of the centenary of Indian cinema in 2013, the gallery is pleased to present the first showing of the Nemai Ghosh Archive, Nemai Ghosh: Satyajit Ray and Beyond. While justly associated primarily with photographing the films and the person of the auteur Satyajit Ray, the exhibition attempts to bring to light his lesser-known but equally extensive documentation of cinema, both mainstream Hindi cinema from Bombay as well as regional Bengali cinema. This exhibition brings together for the first time this rich body of work, as a tribute to the individual filmmakers, including Satyajit Ray, Indian cinema in its centennial year, and the power of the photograph to witness, record and tell stories.

Curated by Pramod Kumar K. G., the exhibition presents several iconic and many never-before-seen images of actors, scenes, sets and locations during the filming of Satyajit Ray’s films as well as the filmmaker at work, taken over a twenty-five year period, alongside an array of images of regional films and actors.

The accompanying book on the exhibition has essays by Pramod Kumar K. G., Sabeena Gadhioke and Jai Arjun Singh, beside a timeline of Nemai Ghosh’s career, as well as an array of images marking his tryst with cinema. These include the specially selected 250 images that form the focus of the exhibition, and are accompanied by detailed captions. All prints are on archival paper and are part of an edition of six each.

Through this celebration of Nemai Ghosh’s work with cinema, DAG is pleased to showcase a section of this archive, an invaluable part of India’s cinematic and photographic history. Acquired in 2006, the images have been digitised and form part of DAG’s extensive archives. This, its first exhibition that explores the medium of photography, adds to its ongoing engagement with exploring and documenting the reservoir of the history and richness of Indian art.