The urge to photograph or videograph is now a global phenomenon. The age of selfies points to the complex and unfolding realities of self-creation, self-actualisation, self-care and self-absorption. Yet the genesis of photography in the early twentieth century, though it began with portraiture, likely arose from a stirring romance with the other. It came from a need to look more closely, to understand what lay near and what remained hidden, and to move towards a public opinion shaped by political agencies defining justice, equality, beauty, freedom and independence.
As these agencies proliferated, the public imagination blossomed and ripened. Historically, the photograph fulfilled the need for documentation. But something in the way it generated a quiet, negotiable interiority made it an experience in itself, unforgettable. Making and seeing a photograph became a story that spoke to many stories. Multiple voices emerged to interpret India in the years following Independence, carrying new-found hope and a spirit of experimentation nurtured by study, public discourse and courage. A Photographer’s Diary by Arun Ganguly stands as proof of this enriching dialogue between the artist and his role models, between the artist and his own remembrance of things past and the act of returning.
Written in simple, evocative Bengali prose, it is an unforgettable read, drawing one inward into an old and still growing passion for photography. It chronicles, with a Blakelike innocence and honesty, a wealth of personal anecdotes and offers an opportunity to understand the diverse influences, encounters and practices that shaped a deeply sensitive and intuitive photojournalist in the years following the Second World War. The book contains not a single photograph, and yet while reading it I moved through endless still and cinematic images. Each chapter made me pause to absorb the minute details of imagery and feeling tones.
One chapter did not necessarily lead to another, so each rose like a wave and held its form, what Roland Barthes calls the punctum, the point at which the photograph animates the viewer and meets the studium, the intention of the photographer. And yet I was not reading Barthes. I was poring over text, only to realise on repeated readings that each chapter was itself a photograph I was composing. As Barthes writes, “The photograph is in no way animated, but it animates me; this is what creates every adventure.” A cat drinking water and a prize of fifteen rupees in a magazine were enough to kindle early explorations in writing and photographing trees and insects for a publication called Tropical Photography.
The journey of writing photo essays that began on a children’s page in Amrita Bazar Patrika and the literary pages of The Statesman, moved into advertising, and then returned to photography as a true calling twenty years later, was shared by a growing tribe of enthusiastic photographers and filmmakers in the 1950s. But who would have noticed trees and insects without the open sky and grounds around a bungalow home in Dacca, without Hemendranath Chatterjee’s book on trees, and without their constant presence as companions? There was also the mathematics professor father, fond of gardening and crosswords, whose lessons in English and comprehension, and whose insistence on planting seedlings at the exact centre of a circular planter, would later shape the foundations of visual composition.
The tribute to Life magazine and photographers like Gordon Parks and Eugène Atget emerges from intense observation and study. In the homage to Parks lies a deep understanding that a life lived through many small, unseen jobs can give birth to vision, that a photographer may also write poetry and compose music and ballet. Photography becomes both a beginning and an arrival, opening into many modes of perception, seemingly incoherent yet quietly decisive, and increasingly cherished over time. It carries both edge and ease. Ganguly’s diary also encapsulates the history of Indian photography through the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Barthes points to the intersection of photography with sociology, anthropology, history and psychoanalysis as the source of the visual medium’s power.
Even as contemporary conflicts unfold, the account of wartime scarcity during the Second World War resonates deeply. There are memories of baffle walls built in anticipation of bombings, of stirrup pumps set up to douse fires, of an elder brother in the Royal Air Force bringing home mosquito repellents, Baby Ruth chocolate, dehydrated potatoes and eggs from American supplies. There is also the pencil with improved graphite, its lines rising clearly on the page. If you recognise the small bookstall in Golpark that shut down in the rain and drew him back again and again, hoping that a coveted issue of Life featuring Hitler’s private photographs would remain unsold, you are not alone. That tiny, cavernous, magical stall lives on in shared memory, a reminder that a magazine seller can offer a ticket to a lifelong journey.
Photography magazines and state associations that offered diplomas and training in printing and technique formed the fertile ground from which Indian photography grew and flourished, spreading across the country. Alongside this came a celebration of diversity and the quiet assertion of the individual voice. Life magazine and the new wave of cinema laid down larger outlines, “To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events,” as Henry Luce wrote. They transmitted a rare and startling idiom of freedom to a generation of Bengali youth eager to explore identity, for both self and nation. Ganguly’s diary stands as a testament to the making of an artist driven to portray life as it was lived, close to nature, in villages, by rivers, along mountain paths, an enquiry into what is fleeting and what endures, creating his own small, intimate version of Life.
Getting off at small stations, making repeated journeys to Benaras, trekking through hills, writing an ode to the bokul tree or to a dog that guided lost trekkers, nature appears in Wordsworthian splendour. He recalls friends who found recognition abroad: Tito Nandy at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, with a solo exhibition at ICCR titled Winter in New York; his guru Parimal Goswami, a prolific writer and photographer whose manual became a guiding text despite their never meeting; Siddhartha Ghosh, who compiled a book on Bengali photographers; and Ami Vitale, who captured Durga Puja and moments of human tenderness amidst conflict.
The move from advertising to photojournalism formed part of a larger journey towards discovering a deep love for one’s own country and its people, and a desire to be one with them. This indefatigable urge to travel from the Himalayas to Tamil Nadu, from Assam and Meghalaya to Manipur and Rajasthan, reveals the living truth of an inexhaustible pluralism that continues to be cherished. A special note of thanks to Madhuchanda Sen and Maya Books for bringing forth this invaluable piece of photojournalistic history.