II miglior fabbro:
Jyotish Chakraborty

Premjish Achari

Remembrance is an obeisance, it is a tribute. Each time we remember a person as images,
sounds, and faint traces of smell, we pay a tribute to his/her existence. These remembrances
are sometimes inscribed by longings, nostalgia and a yearning for that person. Sometimes
they are the recollections of the memories of our shared existence. Then, it becomes a tribute
to the collective being. It revokes a sentimental evocation of a past and, in the present,
it arises out of an absence of the person we remember. Memories frozen somewhere in
time are substituted for the absence and they render a virtual presence of that person. The
very mention of memory and remembrance brings us squarely to the altar of photography.
Which other medium is better utilized to freeze a moment in the history of mankind other
than a camera? That is why it left many painters insecure about their artistic pursuit and
forced them to look inward. A photograph is a frozen moment. It is a validation of that moment’s existence. A faithful reproduction of frozen time packed with memories. Since its
advent in the Industrial Age, photography has faithfully served the purpose of documenting
the moment. Therefore, it is deemed as authentic, archival, documentary and above all, a
substitute for the real. Remembrances were now possible with a glance at photographs.
Hence, it could be also ideal to remember an obscure, lesser known and unacknowledged
photographer through his photographs.
Jyotish Chakraborty was one of the numerous practitioners of photography in India,
but he was an exception. He remained loyal to the art of black and white photography till
he retired, a forced decision due to the changing times, but thereby, he set a benchmark
for his contemporaries on what should be a better quality black and white photograph.
He set a new visual code for his generation and very humbly changed their understanding
of what is worth looking at by devising a new grammar for not only photography, but
also for processing the photograph. These codes of conduct were never imposed with an
authoritarian vigour of a teacher, for Jyotish was not a patriarch—his craft was his doctrine.
He never took credit for his way of thinking.