In the 35 years that I knew him, I rarely ever remember him stepout of the house without a still camera. Of the hundreds of photographs taken of Navroze, starting from the early 1960s, there are rarely any photos of him where he could be seen without a camera dangling from his neck or the shoulder,unless,of course,he was astride a motorcycle.But except for a brief period during the late 1960s when he worked for the Ford Foundation as a photographer, he was never a photographer in the classical sense.Other than the Jazz musicians that he photographed for over 3 decades, he rarely ever pursued a subject or story. He had the unique gift of connecting with people of all ages and across cross-sections of society. He liked to observe people, meet them, talk to them,know about them even when he was not shooting.Growing up in a time when the country offered space for multiple viewpoints, and artists of all ilk, poets, writers, painters, filmmakers, believed their work could contribute to the creation of an equitable nation,he had aligned with progressive politics that empathized with the underprivileged and the marginalized. This informed the way he captured people on his camera; always with compassion and never allowing the camera to impose, intrude, or be patronizing. For him, the camera was an extension of his‘eye’, to capture the world as he saw it. A documentation of his journey through life, in a way, that was not even necessary to share with the world. Other than the Jazz photographs, and a smaller set of photographs of the traditional Kushti Akhadas of Dharwar, none of his other work has been shown publicly. Infact, it was only in the last few years that he was convinced to shed his reluctance to share this part of his life, and agree to digitize his analogue images, which could then be curated and exhibited. This is a selection from over 20,000 photographs shot in about 6 decades.The images,and the book,aim to share his unseen work with the public. More importantly, through the photographs and the text, the book hopes to present a glimpse of Navroze from the way he looked at the world, and through that, a chance to discover the person I, and many others, called NC.
Sanjiv Shah (Curator)