No One Is a Stranger Photographs by Kushal Ray

“Kolkata Centre for Creativity Presents Kushal Ray’s Solo Photography Exhibition: ‘No One Is a Stranger: Photographs by Kushal Ray’ an exhibition by noted photographer Kushal Ray, on view from 29 August to 20 September 2025 on the First Floor of KCC.
 
Curated by Swastik Pal, photographer and long-time collaborator of Ray, the exhibition showcases 65 evocative photographic prints spanning several decades. It explores themes of identity, urban life, landscape, and cultural memory through a deeply personal and visually resonant lens.
‘I see photography as a unique adventure to discover how I am placed with the people I like and love,’ said Kushal Ray. ‘My aim is to give the viewer the feeling that I am trying to convey an experience I have felt profoundly.’

Entirely self-taught, Ray has built a powerful visual vocabulary grounded in observation, empathy, and reflection. With series such as Ladakh and Intimacies, the latter a widely recognized series, No One Is a Stranger: Photographs by Kushal Ray draws attention to his distinctive style—marked by quiet intensity and emotional clarity. Ray embodies the spirit of an artist driven by tireless curiosity—vicariously studying his predecessors while resolutely forging his own visual language. Consciously diverging from prevailing trends, his practice blends critical insight with emotional nuance.”

We asked Kushal Ray about his relationship with photography, and the power of the visual medium. More below.
 
Beginning with Photography
I was trained as a sports journalist because I had a football background. But after four or five years, I realized it was not the profession I could love. Some of my colleagues at The Telegraph were photographers, and I began to admire their work. I was struck by the conflict and similarity between words and images. I read somewhere that if a photograph could truly be explained in words, there would be no need for the image. That thought stayed with me. I had a background in painting and drawing as a child, under the guidance of some of my father’s painter friends. My father, a journalist and Bengali writer, was an art lover. From him, I developed a sense of design, which carried into my photography. In 1983, I bought my first camera, a Russian Zenith, and two years later switched to Nikon.
At that time, I was still working as a journalist but also began doing photo features. My first was published in 1985, on the river Ganga. Later, I photographed the Calcutta ghats, and even a profile of the Kathakali dancer Kalamandalam Kishan Nair.

No One is a Stranger
The current exhibition, No One is a Stranger, began as an intimate family project. The family belonged to a close friend I grew up with, and I knew them well. There were ten members across four generations. After years of traveling through Ladakh, North India, Gujarat, and elsewhere, I wanted to work more peacefully, without the constant demands of street photography. At that time, new kinds of photography were emerging, like the work of Dayanita Singh, which I admired. In Kolkata, however, my peers largely followed the established traditions of candid or landscape photography. My work with this family felt different, and initially, there was no appreciation for it. Recognition first came from outside Kolkata, when Shahidul Alam in Dhaka and Sunil Gupta curated my work in an exhibition on new trends in Indian photography at the University of Southampton.

My style has always been about trust. I want my subjects to know they are being photographed and to accept me into their lives. That allows me to go deeper. I have followed this approach not only in the family project but also in Ladakh, in Gujarat, and with the Chinese community I worked with.

Working with Black and White
I first worked in color but eventually moved to black and white, encouraged by my mentor in Kolkata. The real influence came from Robert Frank. In his book The Americans, he wrote that black and white symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is always subjected. That idea moved me deeply.
Henri Cartier-Bresson once said color is for painters, while black and white is for photographers. But it was Frank’s words that stayed with me. Black and white hold the contrasts of life—hope, joy, and happiness on one side, despair, sadness, and tragedy on the other. For me, that duality captures the emotional essence of photography.

No One Is a Stranger: Photographs by Kushal Ray, curated by Swastik Pal, will be on display at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity until 20th September, 2025. 

Words Neeraja Srinivasan 
Date 11-9-2025