Ray was my oxygen: Nemai Ghosh

He was aspiring to be an actor when a sudden twist of fate turned him to photography that he would pursue for the rest of his life, consequently becoming arguably the greatest “photo-biographer” from the country.

It was in the late sixties that Nemai Ghosh was part of Utpal Dutt’s Little Theatre Group. “We were doing our regular share of Shakespearean adaptations, Othello and Julius Caesar and a lot of progressive Bengali plays,” recollects Ghosh sitting in a plush chair next to what looked like a Raza painting inside Delhi Art Gallery in Kala Ghoda.

He has been a prolific photographer and finds it difficult to keep it organised. “Every other day, I find some negative lying in some corner. In the past few decades I have worked relentlessly. And now I need to save all of it, but not many are ready to help,” he laments. He is 82 now and a spinal cord surgery has taken a toll on him. “I work less frequently these days and I always need someone next to me,” he lamented.

According to Ghosh, “India doesn’t care much about archiving and preserving and currently I am unable to carry this on my own, I have done whatever I could within my limited means and now I want to hand it over to someone,” he explains.

Recently, Ashish Anand from DAG Modern came forward and taken a considerable chunk of his work and has been trying to preserve. In such an effort, they had organised a month long exhibition of his work on the sets of Ray’s films in Mumbai.

Beginning: On asking how he came into photography, a smile appeared almost instantly and he sat up straight to share every tiny detail of the story. “In those days, most of the film cast and crew who were working with Satyajit Ray would come to my house to play cards in the evening. Although I never learnt how to play cards,” he added.

In one of those evening one of them got a Canon QL17 to his house, claiming to have found it in the cab, which eventually came to Ghosh’s hands. “At that point someone promised me with the cutpiece films (unused reels that were scrapped) which I could use for my new camera,” he said.

First Shot: For every photographer there is a certain attachment to his or her first shot. With Ghosh it is no different. It was his first shot that helped him pitch his tent in Ray’s camp forever. “Since I knew most of the cast and crew personally, I got to know that Manik da (Ray) was shooting in Rampurhat (West Bengal). The day I reached, they were rehearsing a scene (which is now a classic) from Gopi Gyne Bagha Byne.” The scene he was referring to is when Goopy, facing humiliation is exiled from his village and as he enters a forest to find Bagha sleeping next to his drum. Later when on someone’s persuasion, I went to meet Manik da, he was shooting in the studio. He saw that image; he exclaimed in jest how I had stolen his angle and nudged me inside the studio. That was his beginning.

Bresson: Though he had the validation from the best in the business, he wasn’t satisfied. By the mid eighties he started writing letters to Henri Cartier-Bresson. “After almost a year of correspondence, he decided to meet and I left for Paris with Sandip (Ray),” he said. All he cared was a validation from Cartier-Bresson.

He recalled how he was offered a glass of wine, which being a teetotaller, he initially refused but eventually accepted while the photographer of “decisive moments” and his wife Martine (Franck) scrutinised his photographs for about half an hour. “After they were done, he asked me what I wanted to do with these photographs, I told him very clearly that only if he thinks them of any use, I would take them forward and exhibit them and probably make a photobook.”

Bresson not gave him a go-ahead but also helped him connect with some of the major curators and editors from Paris, which eventually led Ghosh to exhibit his work for the first time in Paris.

“When Manik da heard that Bresson has written a foreword for me, he was delighted, he called up my wife and told her that I have conquered the world.”Ghosh drinks only wine now.

Ray: Ghosh is indebted to Ray and he makes no bones about it. “He has taught me four essential element of life — discipline, sincerity, honesty and tenacity,” he points out. My relationship with Manik da was very organic. Most of the times he didn’t have to explain me anything. Just a look, and I would understand what he meant,” he remembers. Whenever I felt low, I would go his place and sit in his study.

He would throw a magazine and I would read, while he kept doing his own work. It was a very intimate space that we shared. He was almost like my relative.” Ray called him “poka-makod” which roughly translates to bug, but perhaps he was stressing on “fly on the wall”, but for Ghosh, Ray was “like oxygen” who taught him how to work relentlessly.