Celebrated fashion photographer Prabuddha Dasgupta, who imparted a unique aesthetic to the industry and left a trail of compelling images, passed away at Alibaug in Maharashtra’s Raigad district on Sunday. The 58-year-old lensman suffered heart attack.
A self-taught photographer, Mr. Dasgupta’s iconoclastic work with nude portraits broke taboos. His black-and-white photographs of his muse and model Lakshmi Menon revealed a new aesthetic to the fashion industry.
“His work was always amazing. The style and look of his photographs was always much ahead of his time. The way he shot women was especially beautiful and very aesthetic. I love his work in black-and-white,” leading fashion and film photographer Dabboo Ratnani told
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In 1996, Mr. Dasgupta broke a taboo by publishing ‘Women’, “a controversial collection of portraits and nudes of urban Indian women.”
His work restored the nude to its “rightful place” in the Indian cultural discourse. With his out-of-the-box creativity and individualistic aesthetic, Mr. Dasgupta carved a niche for himself in the international fashion circuit as well.
His work has been exhibited internationally and he has been published in Indian, French, Italian and American magazines. He received several awards and grants, including the prestigious Yves Saint Laurent grant for photography.
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“Prabuddha was not just a photographer.He was a genius who elevated fashion images to art. He has left a void, but at the same time a legacy that young talent should take forward to create path-breaking images the world can admire,” designer Wendell Rodricks told The Hindu .