Photography: India
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Bourne and Shepherd, Kolkata
The Times of India, Jun 17 2016
Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay
World's longest-running studio shuts shop
Bourne and Shepherd, the world's longest running photographic studio, has called it a day after 176 years during which it not only chronicled Kolkata's history but also captured defining moments of the Raj. Some of its photographs hang from the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Portraits in London, the Cambridge University library -and just about every home that worships Rama Krishna Paramhansa. B&S took the only known portraits of the mystic, and had the sole charter for the Delhi Darbar in 1911.
In the end, the 65gram memory card weighed heavy on a stockpile of history .Jayant Gandhi, the current owner of the studio, told TOI on Wednesday that it is not possible for him to “run the studio any more“ because of his age. Gandhi is in his late 70s. The studio never recovered from a devastating fire in February 1991 and the shift of photography from film to digital format drove the final nail. The studio's renowned skill in converting a `photo-sensitive film' to `negative' and from there to a print on bromide paper became completely irrelevant.
Set up in 1840 -only a year after the introduction of commercial photography in France and England -B&S lost almost its entire treasure trove in the 1991 inferno. It marked the beginning of the end. “Everything was destroyed in the fire and the loss became irreversible. We had the finest collection of photographs, but the treasure vanished in smoke,“ said Gandhi.
The four-storeyed struc ture, which is a landmark in Kolkata, is a spectre of its past. Youngsters who throng Esplanade call it “that haunted building“.It's hard for this generation to believe that the studio rooms upstairs once buzzed with activity , the likes of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray flitted in and out.
The blackened elevator shaft today stands as a charred frame of history . The lift was never restored. The massive rooms on the fourth floor, where the studio and the library used to be, are now open to the sky . Beside the staircase lies a big, rusty iron safe, which is literally a treasure chest.
“We used to keep our most precious glass negatives in this safe. But the fire almost melted the metal and we could never open it thereafter,“ said Gandhi.
The iconic building still had an old functional studio till June 2016. The camera used by legendary Samuel Bourne exists. But more like a sideshow in the digital age.
