|
Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy
Kulwant Roy was born in 1914 in Bagli Kalan, Ludhiana and educated in Lahore. Without any formal training in photography Roy then joined Gopal Chitter Kuteer’s studio in Lahore. He joined the Royal Indian Air Force in Kohat near Quetta in 1941. However, he found it difficult to tolerate the discriminatory policies of the British gov-ernment, which resulted in his ouster from the air force. By then his experience of tak-ing several aerial photographs from the cockpit of the planes that he used to fly had laid a firm foundation for the shape of things to come. Roy became passionate about photography. As a freelancer in Lahore, he documented several significant political events in Pakistan. Re-locating to Delhi in 1943, Roy started his own agency, the Asso-ciated Press Agency in Delhi. It was during these years that Roy captured untiring im-ages of well-known historical events some of which are displayed in this exhibition.
This exhibition curated by Aditya Arya, a historical visual treat, from the priceless collection of photographs taken by press photographer Kulwant Roy’s, prints and neg-atives. In the process of documenting the rare photographs of Kulwant Roy, Aditya Arya discovered a rare and valuable visual archive, including many unpublished pic-tures, of a momentous era in India's history which form the part of this exhibition. These priceless images from around the 1940s, which lay hidden for decades, were brought back to life through the expertise of curator Aditya Arya.
|
