History On Bromide : outlookindia.com

Twice, over 24 years, Aditya Arya tried to open the boxes that photojournalist Kulwant Roy delivered to him, bit by bit, on his Lambretta scooter before he died, anonymous and impoverished, in 1984. But each time, he gave up. There was just too much in those boxes, explains Arya, an advertising photographer with a busy schedule.

There is still too much. On the eve of the first exhibition of Roy’s work, which opens at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) on October 3, thousands of Roy’s negatives, in neatly labelled boxes, remain unseen.

But the 7,000-odd that Arya has digitally scanned since December 2007—when he finally began to unpack the legacy that Roy, a family friend, had bequeathed him—are glimpses of a historical treasure house.

Check it out here.