Visit to a photography exhibition

Department of English, The Bhawanipur Education Society College organized a field trip for the postgraduate students on 22nd March 2022. Accompanied by their teachers, the students were taken to Jadunath Bhavan and Resource Centre. The center was set up with assistance from The Ministry of Culture, Government of India. It housed an exhibition titled “Twin Sisters with Cameras”, celebrating the works of Debolina Mazumdar and Manobina Roy. Sabeena Gadihoke, Mallika Leuzinger and Tapati Guha-Thakurta were the curators; and the exhibition was produced and designed by Kamalika Mukherjee and Anuja Mukherjee.

After a short introduction on the purpose of the exhibition by Miss Kamalika Mukherjee, it’s subjects, a brief history of how the iconic Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre came into existence and Monobina Roy’s son- Joy Bimal Roy’s struggle to have this exhibition for the la

st eighteen years for his mother; the students were taken to the exhibition arena on the first floor which manifested the brilliantly curated photographs.

Producer and designer Anuja Mukherjee narrated how the two sisters began their adventures with the camera when their father Binode Behari Sen Roy gifted them a box camera on their twelfth birthday and even set up a makeshift dark room in the house and encouraged his daughters to print their own photos. A section of the exhibition was dedicated to portray their early life spent in Ramnagar and their experiments with the lens.

The students were also enlightened with various interesting anecdotes on the sisters’ lives and the aestheticism of their photography. They mostly intended to capture their lives within the threshold of their ‘homes’. Most of the early photographs depicted the women in their lives. As the narratives of their lives changed gradually, they soon started capturing their children, their pets and the outer world too. The students also got the opportunity to have a look at the some of the cameras used by the sisters.

The students had an enriching experience in the exhibition. The field trip was a huge success.