Last week, I attended the superb photography exhibition, A Woman and Her Camera: The Photography of Manobina Roy, at Artisans' Art Gallery, which runs till December 4. A gifted photographer with a discerning eye, the late Manobina Roy was also the wife of distinguished filmmaker Bimal Roy and mother of Joy Roy, Aparajita Sinha, Yashodhara Roy and Rinki Bhattacharya.

Although her photographs were published in magazines in her lifetime (1919-2001), she remained under the shadow of her famous husband. Joy has written of how they had had an exhibition of Bimal Roy's photographs at the Nehru Centre in 2000. Their mother sat in a corner of the gallery, expressionless. "No one has ever done this for my photos," she said. That's when Joy resolved that he would organise an exhibition of her photographs. The current exhibition, he said, was mainly due to the efforts of MC Mohan, a professor and art historian.