Sunil Jana:

Sunil Jana is one of the rare photographers who have been awarded the prestigious “Padmashree” Award for outstanding photography. Photography was a childhood passion which was encouraged and enhanced by famous photographer and family friend Shambhu Saha. His passion was nature photography.
In a colourful life as a photographer Sunil was appointed as the art director of the communist manifesto “People’s War” [later “People’s Age”] –by the party editor P.C. Joshi. His camera frames the post ‘40s Indian socio-cultural and political space through myriad angles. This included nation – wide travel and involving in serious risk as he had to traverse the riot hit areas. He accompanied the famous American photo journalist Margaret Borack to the riot-ravaged areas of Kolkata and Noakhali under the guise of a black American accomplish for Margaret.
Jana later came back to Kolkata as a free-lance journalist and joined Victor Seguni’s photo agency “Tropics” through which he became associated with famous archeologist Veriar Allwin who was then working on the Indian tribes. Jana worked hard on this project and framed the lives of these people with supreme skill.
Jana’s works soon started to get international acclaim and he was appointed as the photographer of United Nations. A few years earlier this pioneer of Indian photography has died in London.

Raghu Rai:

Raghu Rai started his photographic career as the news photographer for “The Statesman Group”. He later became one of the mainstays of their photography section. Then he moved on to “The Anandabajar Group”. Then he worked as photo-journalist for “Sunday”, “New Delhi” and finally as the photo-editor of “India Today” which became the watershed of his career as he initiated the line of photo- feature here. The subject of the story could be anything ranging from political topics to the utterly humanistic tale of the life of an old beggar’s relation with another beggar – a young woman with ragged clothes. Rai’s sensitive lens has focused on multiple other stories like the story on Indira Gandhi or the book that tells the enduring story of Tajmahal through a series multiple photographic frames.
The ever-green Rai is now one of the world’s most respected photographers. Pathbreaking journals like “The National Geographic”, “Paris- Match”, “Stern’, “News Week” etc. publish his photos. As a recognition of his talent and contribution to the field of photography the “Bibliotheque National” in Paris has kept quite a few of his works in their collection.

Raghubir Singh:

Raghubir Singh epitomizes that school of photography which believes that it is neither technique nor experimentation, but “real” photo, taken form the eye-level, with subtle variations, that tales the enchanting story of human life and world around. He preferred 50 mm and 85 mm instead of 150 mm lenses.
His best works include a magnificent series on the Zaroas and Sentineleese in the Andamans for “National Geographic” where he was targeted by the tribes, a series on “Kumbhamela”, another on Rajasthan, the critically acclaimed work on Paris – the city of his living for the “Time - Life” publication group and many other remarkable works published on various other international
journals like “New York Times”, “Stern”, “Life ” etc. He has passed away few years back.

Dilip Mehta:

“…he has traveled around the globe twice in the last twelve months. Stayed in seventeen countries. Carried five cameras, fifteen lenses and has worked for eighteen hours daily and has come back with fifty thousand photographs”. – “Applied Arts” – A Canadian art magazine on Dilip Mehta.
Dilip Mehta is the real globetrotter photographer and the first superstar in the history of Indian photography in terms of glamour and recognition. Strangely, Mehta’s interest in photography grew only by chance after getting bored with traditional academics [he was an Economics graduate!]. So after Dun school he went to New York and joined Brooklyn’s famous “Pratt Institute” and then joined as the art director to a designing company. Soon he got bored enough to leave this and go to Canada to stay with his sister Deepa. There he accidentally chanced upon his brother-in-law’s camera and soon embarked on a nation-wide photographing tour of Canada and joined a photo agency named “Contact Press Images”. In 1977 he came to cover the Indian election for this group. This series was published in the “Time” as well as Morarjee Desai’s photo-portrait which appeared on the cover page of “Time”. This was the beginning of Dilip’s career in superstardom. Some of the feathers in an awesomely illustrious cap are the coverage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s marriage for “London Sunday Times”, a magnificent portfolio on President Ronald Regan, the coverage of the Seoul Olympics for “Time” a ten day stint in Michael Jackson’s L.A. farmhouse to capture glimpses of his private space, an exclusive series on the Nehru family as well as the radically different frames that capture the curses of the Bhopal gas massacre [the famous “Zeo” magazine published a 25 page series with these photographs]. Fame and flamboyance have chased Dilip around the globe and all the famous magazines around the world like “The National Geographic”, “Paris- Match”, “Stern’”, “New York Times” have published his photos.

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