The legendary French photographer Marc Riboud once said: “Taking pictures is savouring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” And that is exactly what the exhibition Faces and Facets: Satyajit Ray in Colour is all about. The maverick filmmaker is captured through the lens of his long time collaborator, the late Nemai Ghosh, who presents the many moods, rituals and rhythms of Satyajit Ray across nearly 25 years.
Ray has often been remembered in stark black-and-white—cerebral, towering, untouchable. Colour transforms him entirely. Here, the filmmaker exists amid fading ochres, moss-green rooms, crimson fabrics, monsoon skies and the burnished gold of studio lamps. Suddenly, Ray is no longer a figure from film history, but someone inhabiting space in real time—smoking absentmindedly between takes, bending over calligraphy, laughing quietly with collaborators, or retreating into moments of intense inwardness. Ghosh’s camera lingers on gestures others may have overlooked: the way Ray held a pencil while sketching a frame, or the concentration with which he listened to actors rehearse. There is almost no spectacle in these photographs, and that is precisely their power.
Ghosh was not an outsider looking in; he moved through Ray’s world with unusual familiarity. Over the years, the camera gained access not only to film sets but also to private domestic spaces—rooms lined with books, music sessions at the piano, tea shared with friends, long afternoons of solitary work.
The exhibition subtly reveals how deeply visual Ray’s imagination was, shaped perhaps by his years at Visva-Bharati University and by a lifelong engagement with illustration, typography, and graphic design. Cinema, in these photographs, becomes an extension of drawing. Yet the exhibition’s emotional resonance lies in its refusal to monumentalise him entirely. For all his stature, Ray appears profoundly human in these photographs. One image captures him alone in an open field, dwarfed by sky; another catches him mid-conversation, eyes suddenly softened by amusement. These fleeting moments dismantle the intimidating aura surrounding the auteur and replace it with something infinitely more affecting: vulnerability. Even chaos—crowded sets, technical interruptions, hurried preparations—feels strangely composed under Ghosh’s gaze.
When & Where:
Faces and Facets: Satyajit Ray in Colour; DAG, New Delhi;
Till July 4