From Feluda sketches to film sets: Satyajit Ray like never before through Nemai Ghosh’s lens
At DAG’s new exhibition in Delhi, Nemai Ghosh’s photographs of Satyajit Ray, frame an intimate portrait of the auteur.
Ray composed music on a synthesiser at home Described by French humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson as Satyajit Ray’s “photo-biographer”, Nemai Ghosh first met the filmmaker in 1968 during the making of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne in the unassuming city of Rampurhat in West Bengal. “We clicked immediately,” Ghosh recalls in the preface to the publication, Faces and Facets: Satyajit Ray in Colour. “The way he walked, talked and handled his cast, crew and equipment — in fact everything about him — intrigued me. I was so mesmerised by the man that I forgot to take any photographs of the shooting. My two rolls of black-and-white film were finished in no time. Manik da never said a word to me; he just kept watching from the corner of his eye. But that was all the encouragement I needed.”
Nemai Ghosh
That instinctive connection became the foundation of a remarkable visual archive that now forms the core of the new DAG exhibition and publication. It unfolds like an intimate portrait of Ray where he is seen not only as the globally celebrated auteur but also the more private and deeply disciplined master who Ghosh followed “like his shadow” for over two decades. Gosh, who passed away in 2020, has been quoted in the publication, stating: “I was crazy about capturing him in my camera every moment… My fascination for Manik da was like that — unbridled, unreasonable.”
Some of the most lingering photographs therefore, perhaps, emerge from quieter moments, including the time spent at home and with family. In a 1982 image, for instance, he sits on a chair in his sprawling Calcutta study, surrounded by books and papers. The room probably is where he wrote his scripts and illustrated his stories, as an accompanying note reads, “I don’t feel very creative when I’m abroad somehow. I need to be in my chair in Calcutta!” Another 1986 photograph from the same room shows him completing an illustration for one of his Feluda stories, and in a rather reflective 1990 image, he is seen pacing the verandah at his home after his heart attacks. “It’s a bit of a bore but it has to be done,” Ray remarked of the walks. “And I can think while I am doing it; ideas do come.”
Ray consults his kheror khata in mustard fields near Lucknow
The domestic intimacy continues through the annual anniversary portraits that Ghosh began taking of Ray and his wife Bijoya in 1973. In another warm 1991 frame that brings together three generations of the Ray family — Satyajit, Bijoya, son Sandip, daughter-in-law Lalita and infant grandson Souradip — we see his more familial side.
Yet, the exhibition never lets viewers forget the scale of Ray’s artistic presence, with several of the memorable photographs also emerging from the sets of some of his iconic films. If in a 1972 image from the making of Ashani Sanket (1973), the filmmaker is seen bending down to help cinematographer Soumendu Roy pull his foot free from mud while shooting in Dangapara (Murshidabad, West Bengal), in a 1980 frame he is seen standing in a balcony to brief filmmaker and actor Aparna Sen in Calcutta. We are also introduced to his kheror khata, the sturdy red notebook that was central to his filmmaking process. A 1974 photograph shows him referring to it during the making of Sonar Kella in Rajasthan. The accompanying text reveals that these notebooks contained everything: dialogue, shot divisions, background research, set designs, music ideas, names of potential actors and even doodles. “Only the film’s budget, by an amusing irony, is absent,” notes author Andrew Robinson, who has written the text for the publication.
Ray photographed by actress Smita Patil, on the sets of Deliverance (Sadgati)
The photographs also repeatedly reveal how completely Ray immersed himself in every department of filmmaking. If in one image related to Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977) he is at home designing Wajid Ali Shah’s crown, in another he rehearses a chess sequence with actors Saeed Jaffrey and Sanjeev Kumar. On the piano, he is seen composing music during the making of The Inner Eye (1972), a documentary on Benode Behari Mukherjee, his favourite teacher when he was studying art in Santiniketan.
A meticulous perfectionist, in a lighter moment, he breaks into laughter seeing actor Kamu Mukherjee mimicking Ghosh on the sets of Joi Baba Felunath in 1978, and the observer also becomes the observed when actor Smita Patil turns the camera towards him during the filming of Sadgati (1981).
There are also moments of public recognition, including Ray receiving the Legion of Honour from French President François Mitterrand in 1989, being interviewed by filmmaker Shyam Benegal in 1981, and with actor Gérard Depardieu in 1989. There is also him with sitarist Pt Ravi Shankar in Calcutta.
What, perhaps, distinguishes Faces and Facets is the perceptiveness with which it reveals how Ghosh was not merely documenting a distant genius but also unravels the warm relationship shared between the two. “As I became more and more involved with Manik da, I ventured not only into his shooting spaces but also into his personal space. I visited his house as often as I liked, at any hour. If I did not turn up for a day or two, there would be a phone call asking why I was absent,” writes Ghosh in the preface.
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