I cannot do without an exposure metre. The more we depend on machines, our own power of deduction, analysis and decision making become non-existent or weak.
- Manobina Roy in her unpublished memoirs.
In 2006 Manobina and filmmaker Bimal Roy’s daughter Aparajita Sinha, based in Hyderabad, shared excerpts from her mother’s memoirs with me.
The material provided a window into an era when a humble camera became an empowering tool in the hands of 12-year-old Manobina and her twin sister Debalina.
Debalina and Manobina
Their father Binode Behari Sen Roy, a member of Britain’s The Royal Photographic Society, gifted them Brownie cameras for their birthday. The 1919-born twin sisters photographed family members, friends, well known personalities, and landscapes with these.
Joy Roy, son of Bimal Roy
Manobina’s memoirs may still be unpublished, but her family is now showcasing an exhibition of 67 of her photographs, to mark her birth centenary, which falls on November 27.
- Sabeena Gadihoke, professor AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, will be at Shrishti on November 27 to talk about early women photographers in India, with special emphasis on Manobina Roy. She shares her impressions on Manobina.
- The first meetings: “I interacted with Manobina Roy on two or three trips to Bombay during 1999-2000, when I started to work on a study on women photographers in India funded by India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru. My study grew out of unanswered questions in my film Three Women and a Camera, about women who photographed but were not professionals. Like many other women of her generation whose work was only viewed as ‘album photography’, Manobina was both surprised as well as pleased that someone wanted to know about her work. She took pride in her photography and had a strong instinct of using and shaping natural light.”
- Significance of Manobina’s work: “Her work has to be seen in the context of the creative space and agency it offered her in a moment when the options to women were limited. She was a homemaker and it was not easy for middle class women to be on the streets. Her photography pre dates the women’s movement as we know by at least three decades in India. Her archive was not just limited to the family album. While there are many gaps as women like Manobina Roy are not accessible to us any longer, their archives raise important questions for photo histories that remain to be documented in the future.”
As young Manobina and Debalina (fondly remembered as Bina di and Lina di by the family) toyed with their cameras, their father set up a dark room at home to make it easier for them to learn to process and develop photographs.
Looking back, Manobina’s son Joy Bimal Roy says, “I wonder if he (his grandfather) realised the true import of his gifts because Ma and Debalina went on to become two of the earliest known women photographers of India.”
The sisters grew up in Ramnagar in Benaras. Binode Behari Sen Roy was tutor to the Crown Prince and headmaster of Meston High School, which belonged to Maharaja Kashi Naresh. The girls were educated and brought up as equal to boys. At a time when women in Ramnagar were in purdah , Binode took his daughters everywhere, including the male-dominated Maharaja’s durbar .
The sisters soon became members of the United Provinces Postal Portfolio Circle, a group created by the Photographic Society of India, which enabled members to exchange photographs by post, and exhibit in other cities.
Manobina was 17 when she married Bimal Roy, who was then a cinematographer. Images taken by the sisters were first published in 1937 in the journal Shuchitra Bharat . In 1940, their work was shown at an exhibition in Allahabad.
Aparajita Sinha
Manobina also wrote for magazines and her articles were illustrated with her own photographs. “Her forte was portraiture and she had a knack for capturing the most favourable angle of her subjects. She shot only in natural light,” Joy observes.
A portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru
Her portraits of former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Vijaylakshmi Pandit and Krishna Menon were particularly appreciated. “Her portrait of Rabindranath Tagore which she took in Jagannath Puri, was one of the 25 best photos of Tagore published by Illustrated Weekly of India in 1951,” informs Joy.
Manual mode
Manobina used a Rolleiflex camera, and later an Asahi Pentax. “She had always wanted a Nikon, and I gifted her one quite late in her life, making sure to get a manual camera, because she disliked the concept of automatic photography. Ma had a steady hand and got remarkable results with long exposure in low light in perfect focus, a notable example being the ones she clicked inside the Folies Bergere in Paris. No cameras were allowed in the auditorium but she managed to smuggle one inside,” Joy recalls.
A photograph by Manobina Roy
She continued to take photographs even after losing vision in one eye in 1969. Though she transitioned to colour images, she preferred black and white. “Ma continued to document our lives till the very end, and the hundreds of photographs she left behind are our priceless legacy,” says Joy.
A photograph by Manobina Roy
He remembers vividly how during an exhibition of his father Bimal Roy’s photographs in January 2000, his mother remarked that no one had ever done such a showcase for her photographs. He was stunned and determined to work towards it.
Manobina breathed her last on September 1, 2001.
(‘A Woman and Her Camera’ is curated by Hyderabad-based M C Mohan and Pratima Sagar. The exhibition will be on view at Shrishti Art Gallery, Hyderabad, from November 16 to 20. The exhibition will then move to Artisans Art Gallery, Mumbai, from November 27 to 30)
