Lensman Hirak Sen, chronicler of Satyajit Ray’s later years and Oscar moment, dies | Kolkata News

The art world mourns the loss of Hirak Sen, a distinguished still photographer who beautifully documented Satyajit Ray’s life and work until his passing at the age of 71

KOLKATA: Still photographer Hirak Sen, whose camera quietly chronicled the working life of Satyajit Ray through the master’s final decade, died on Wednesday. He was 71. Sen had been suffering from dementia and heart ailments for some time.Sen’s association with the Ray household began casually, almost accidentally. He first visited the family in 1974 as a 19-year-old friend of Sandip Ray. Before long, the young visitor had become a familiar presence on sets and at the Ray home on Bishop Lefroy Road. Drawn to the atmosphere of filmmaking, he began clicking photographs alongside Ray’s celebrated on-set photographer Nemai Ghosh.What started as curiosity soon became commitment. Sen followed Ray’s unit for years, watching, waiting and learning the rhythms of a film set. Eventually, he was accepted as an official still photographer. From 1980 until Ray’s death in 1992, Sen remained a constant companion, documenting Ray at work—directing actors, writing, composing music, planning shots and sitting in moments of deep concentration between takes.Among Sen’s most historic images was the photograph of Ray receiving his honorary Oscar from his hospital bed on March 16, 1992. Ray’s acceptance speech, recorded on video that day, was broadcast live 14 days later during the 64th Academy Awards ceremony.“I remember him being with us on the sets of Sonar Kella,” Sandip Ray recalled. “He had a great eye and captured candid moments. His photograph of Baba laughing is particularly endearing to me.”Sen was not merely an observer with a camera. Over the years, he became part of the extended Ray circle, sharing an easy camaraderie with Nemai Ghosh and earning the affection of the unit. Sandip remembered him as a lively presence away from the solemnity of work.“Others too loved having him at adda sessions. He was a livewire off the set and loved leg-pulling,” he said.In later years, Sen’s health declined sharply. Dementia took away much of his memory, though those who knew him remembered vividly the young man who had once wandered into the Ray household and stayed on to preserve some of its most intimate moments.“In the final years, he was afflicted with dementia and the loss of memory was rapid,” Sandip said. “When I heard the news of his demise, scenes and images of him in this house flashed back. He was always there with us, in good times and bad.”Priya Cinema owner Arijit Dutta, who organised an exhibition of Sen’s rarely seen photographs of Satyajit Ray in 2007 during screenings of Aranyer Din Ratri, Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Pratidwandi to mark Ray’s birth anniversary, said he admired Sen’s use of natural light and his black-and-white frames that captured the quiet intensity of Ray’s filmmaking process.“The photographs are still on display at the multiplex in New Town,” Dutta said.He also remembered Sen’s later colour photographs with affection, noting that even towards the end of his professional career, Sen retained an instinct for composition and mood that had defined his long association with one of Indian cinema’s greatest filmmakers.