Legendary progressive photographer Sunil Janah, who documented the Bengal famine of the 1940s with his black-and-white camera and shot to instant fame, has died in the US. He was 96.
Janah died of age-related causes Thursday at his home in Berkeley in California. He is survived by son Arjun, who lives in Brooklyn, said Ram Rahman, a senior functionary of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, which has been archiving Janah’s photographs.
Janah’s wife Shobha died a few weeks ago. Born in Assam in 1918, Janah grew up in Kolkata. He went to St. Xavier’s College and Presidency College in Kolkata and joined the Left inspired students’ movement. When the ban on Communists was lifted by the British, he caught the eye of the Communist Party’s general secretary P.C. Joshi. Mr Joshi recognised Janah’s talent for amateur photography and persuaded him to abandon his English studies and travel with artist Chittoprasad across Bengal to photograph the famine of 1943. Janah’s photographs of the famine published in the party journal People’s War brought him instant fame because of the horror the young lensman had captured through his camera.
He moved with Chittoprasad to live in the party commune in then Bombay, where both were closely associated with the Progressive Writers Association and the Indian People’s Theatre Association. Janah had become the most famous photographer of India by then and was sought out by Life magazine’s Margaret Bourke White, with whom he formed a unique working relationship in 1945. He was a founding member along with Satyajit Ray, Chidananda Das Guptaand Hari Das Gupta of the Calcutta Film Society.