Zahra Amiruddin delves into boxes of forgotten photos by one of India’s earliest women photographers, Manobina Roy to learn about the woman behind the camera.

There lies a house on a sloping hill, hidden by a thick cover of entwined branches, and fallen leaves. Its slanted roof and wrought iron grills are ancient, emulating the stories that whisper through its corridors. The door opens, and I’m greeted with a sleeping cat curled up in a bowl, and a languid silence. Filmmaker Bimal Roy’s son, Joy Roy, leads me through the passages of his parent’s bungalow, whose walls are dotted by black-and-white photographs of his father, made by his late mother, Manobina Roy. 

There have been other subjects, but Joy's mother has obsessively photographed her family- her four children, her famous husband and her twin sister, Debolina. The memories are now paused, in a large tin box brimming with her photographs, negatives, and notes covered in scrawls of experimented exposure times. On the faded yellow patch at the back of a black-and-white photograph, read the words ‘Manobina Roy,’ asserting a presence, in a largely lost story. 

While the late Bimal Roy’s thoughtful films have etched themselves into the country’s cinematic history, Manobina’s luminous, and delicate prints, have continued to exist in a closed box, until today. We all have that one drawer, almaari, dark and dusty corner of storage space crammed with family albums, and jumbled Kodak prints. In the Roy household, the boxes are largely filled with the works of one photographer, often captured in the act of photographing. In a print from Igatpuri, Manobina is seen looking through the viewfinder of her Rolliflex camera, as she carefully frames Debolina, picking flowers in a field. Her husband, Bimal Roy, has documented her fixation with photography, as seen in another wistful black-and-white picture hanging above Joy’s bed. Here too, Manobina holds her Rolliflex close to her chest, while strolling through an island in Greece. 

As I sift through small, medium, and large prints of Manobina’s personal archive, I notice the light and lines that connect each print to the next-meandering into coy smiles, and uninhibited expressions of her subjects. The prints are bound together by their simplicity, but still seem to radiate a lingering air of mystery. This becomes clearer during conversations with Joy, who recounts his mother’s romantic upbringing in the princely state of Ramnagar. 

“My grandfather, Binode Behari Sen Roy, was the tutor to the Crown Prince, and member of the Royal Photographic Society of Britain,” explains Joy fervently. On their 12th birthday in 1930, Manobina and Debolina were gifted two identical Kodak Brownie cameras, owned a darkroom, and eventually became members of the United Provinces Postal Portfolio Circle that exchanged photographs via post. “At a time when women in Ramnagar were in purdah, dadu proudly took his daughters to all-male preserves like the Maharaja's Durbar, and even to mujra performances!” continues Joy. 

At the age of 17, Manobina’s independence was subconsciously contested by her upcoming cinematographer husband, Bimal Roy, who was working at the New Theatres film production company. While the filmmaker was supportive of the photographer’s work, her name was famously attached to his, as the “wife,” the “hobbyist photographer,” whose work was often published in the Illustrated Weekly. In January 2000, during a photography exhibition of Bimal Roy’s work held at the Nehru Centre gallery, Manobina sat expressionless at the far corner of the gallery. Joy recalls- “ She was silent. She didn’t feel like Ma. When I asked her what was wrong, without looking at me, she said under her breath-“No one has ever done this for my photographs.” This drove Joy to put together a retrospective, titled “A Woman and Her Camera,” which now travels to Bombay’s Artisans gallery, from Hyderabad. 

While sifting through the delicate envelopes encasing Manobina and Bimal’s potent family history, I stumble upon a powerful portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru made by Manobina. Through her career, I’m told that she photographed Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Krishna Menon, and Rabindranath Tagore, a portrait that was amongst one of the 25 best photographs of Tagore, published by Illustrated Weekly in 1951. 

In a lecture given by photo historian, Sabeena Gadihoke, Manobina’s no-nonsense personality shines through, in a story about her portrait session with Nehru at Raj Bhavan, Dehradun. While adjusting the settings on her Rolliflex, the illustrious Prime Minster apparently asked her why she was taking so long, to which she jokingly retorted- “Phir, aap kijye na?” Funnily, on returning home from the first session, Manobina realized she hadn’t loaded her camera with any film but was quick to request another session with a charmed Nehru. 

In the 1950s, Afga ran an advertising campaign featuring the works of purely male photographers. At a time when powerful women photographers such as photo-journalist, Homai Vyarawalla, were making a significant mark, Manobina voiced the inequalities of the industry, and spoke for her women peers in Femina, and Illustrated Weekly. She also wrote about racist attitudes towards dark-skin, and patronizing questions from the West, including statements such as- “Do you have elevators in India?”

It’s not surprising though; that the inequality exists in places other than India. During a recent visit to Glasgow, I chanced upon a sprawling retrospective of Linda McCartney’s photographic oeuvre through the 1960s, curated by her iconic husband Paul McCartney, and daughters Mary, and Stella McCartney. The black-and-white photographs house a strong sense of intimacy, and provide a glimpse into recording sessions with The Beatles, light behind-the-scenes snippets of the famous Abbey Road album cover, downtime at the McCartney family’s farm in Scotland, and the lesser-seen-lesser-heard silences with musical legends such as The Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix, and Yoko Ono. And still, it takes two pages on Google, until I find a link about Linda McCartney’s photographic career, amidst headlines like “The Incredibly Romantic Love Story Of Paul and Linda McCartney,”  “She loved him: Linda McCartney’s 1960s letters about Paul revealed,” and “She’d had 20 lovers in two years. Now Linda was out to snare Paul McCartney - no matter who stood in her way.” 

As I write this, a diptych from Slant Rhymes by Alex and Rebecca Norris Webb catches my attention, breathing side-by-side, as contemporaries. Rebecca Norris Webb’s lone tree seen through a yellow filter, effortlessly compliments Alex Webb’s green-tinted portrait from Haiti. The images are conversing with one another in a visual rhythm, existing in poetic harmony. It brings me back to a picture in the Roy home, where Bimal Roy is seen gazing into the distance, as Manobina’s shadow rests upon his form. Here, they too exist in unison, but it took over 90 years, for the shadow to be celebrated as a name-Manobina Roy, the woman behind the camera. 

‘A Woman and Her Camera,’ is ongoing at The Artisans Gallery, Kala Ghoda, until November 30th, 11 am-7 pm.’

Zahra Amiruddin is an independent writer, photographer, and teacher based in Bombay. She is constantly in search of the best light, and practices conjuring the perfect Patronus in her free time.