14/08/2026
In the early 1990s, Kushal Ray walked Calcutta's streets with a Nikon FM and thirty-five millimetre lens, working on borrowed film and stretched money for developer, so that each exposure had to be seen and settled in the mind before it was spent. The archive he built, most of it unprinted until now, stands as a record of a city no longer materially available. An Esplanade bound bus carrying office-goers on Chitpur Road moves through the city, bodies pressed into its interior and hanging from its sides, the vehicle at full capacity as it conducts the ordinary motion of the morning commute. Two men stand in conversation within or near the crush of bodies, their exchange a small grammar of connection held within the larger current of movement, the photograph capturing the way the city conducts itself through proximity and transit, people solitary and bound together at once.
Slide 1: Office-goers on Chitpur Road
Epson Ultrachrome Pro Ink on Epson Enhanced Matte 200 gsm (Inkjet Print)
31 × 48 in.
1993, Chitpur, North Kolkata
Ray walked Calcutta on foot with a Nikon FM and thirty-five millimetre lens, working on borrowed film and stretched money for developer, so that each exposure had to be seen and settled in the mind before it was spent. The archive he built, most of it unprinted until now, stands as a record of a city no longer materially available. Three workers sit stacked on gunnybags piled onto a thela, their bodies arranged for rest or waiting, and they return the camera's gaze directly—faces forward, eyes meeting the lens without deflection or performance. The photograph holds them as Ray found them: people pausing in their labour, sitting where their work has placed them, their directness toward the camera a kind of unspoken acknowledgment.
Slide 2: Untitled
Epson Ultrachrome Pro Ink on Epson Enhanced Matte 200 gsm (Inkjet Print)
12 x 18 in.
1991, Lake Market, Kolkata
Courtesy of the Artist and Emami Art
𝗞𝘂𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗮𝘆 | শহরনামা | 𝘾𝙖𝙡𝙘𝙪𝙩𝙩𝙖 𝟭𝟵𝟵𝟬-𝟭𝟵𝟵𝟯
On view until 𝟭𝟴 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲
Kushal Ray
Richa Agarwal Ushmita Sahu শঙ্খরুপা বসু Sayanth R S
