Atul Kasbekar, eminent high-glamour photographer, has achieved the impossible. Contradicting his trademark glossy style, he has created ‘Honest’ 56 portraits of actors undervalued by the mainstream media, taking Khalid Mohamed in by the images which are remarkably the first endeavor of its kind.

Atul Kasbekar's Honest: Portrait of Character Redefines Celebrity Photography Through Powerful Black-and-White Portraits

June’s heatwave, water shortage, BEST strikes, fuel crises and political defections, were unlike any month in Mumbai associated with the cooling torrents of rainfall. 

On another note, if there was a surprise of the pleasant kind, it was a never-attempted before month-long exhibition (June 5-July 5) - Atul Kasbekar’s Honest: Portrait of Character - of as many as 56 striking black-and-white portraits of Mumbai’s film and web-series actors, whose often side-bar performances we have raved about down the decades.

Yet they have remained largely invisible on the plethora of social media platforms. Even editors of the few surviving print magazines, have been shy of inviting them for studio photo-sessions which are the reserve of A-lister, glamour-exuding actors. The logic has been only glamour sells, consummate artistry can go fly a kite.

Surprising too that the portrait display was elegantly showcased at the Nita Ambani art gallery, Jio World Plaza, BKC. Has she invited the actors portrayed to any of her high-profile soirees at Antilia or flown them to Jamnagar for family weddings? Not most of them anyway. 

Celebrating India's Finest Character Actors

Without embellishing the facial studies against the backdrop of elaborate sets or heavy-duty styling, - in a style reminiscent of Richard Avedon - there are familiar personalities of course ranging from Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Boman Irani, Rahul Bose, Neena Gupta and Ratna Pathak Shah to the comedian Sunil Grover and character actors Atul Kulkarni, Joy Sengupta, Neeraj Kabi, Vijay Sethupathi, Sanjay Mishra, Mona Singh, Chhaya Kadam, Divya Dutta, Gitanjali Kulkarni and more. 

In an interview, with Tanvi Parekh of NOD MAG, Kasbekar has stated, “When you are sitting behind the (video) monitor, you realise that the level of perfection that character actors bring to the role is staggering. There’s never a retake or very, very rarely a retake on account of them, letting the director and the DOP focus on the star who’s getting them the money to make the film. Yet, these artists are getting their share of recognition only now.”

Once associated indelibly with the annual uber glamorous Kingfisher Calendars of Vijay Mallya, featuring models and upcoming heroines like Deepika Padukone in bikinis, sarong and itsy-bitsy drapes on exotic overseas beach sides abroad, it’s to Kasbekar’s eternal credit that at the age of 61, he has reinvented himself without making much of a brouhaha about the logistics which must have gone behind getting over 50-plus actors separately to face the eye of his lens.

Reinvention Beyond the Kingfisher Calendar Legacy

In his 36 years of shooting professionally, the photographs are a coup, which will be hopefully archived for posterity, unlike the oeuvre of countless photographers – Gautam Rajadhyaksha – which are lost in the sands of time; his nephew whom he bequeathed his legacy  has shown a cussed indifference for reasons of his own.

In the last millennium, Kasbekar among other photographers like Sumeet Chopra had shown their portraits at the Jehangir Art Gallery. Undoubtedly, unmanageable crowds thronged the venue, however without eliciting any serious appraisal.

It’s this lacuna that the photographer has aspired to capture with Honest.

The Art of Simplicity in Portrait Photography

The series –which took three years to lens in a Worli studio -- features black-and-white portraits that are starkly different from his high-glam oeuvre. Apparently Kasbekar told himself that this would be his 36th year of shooting professionally and he didn’t have to prove how to play with lights. Not that using a prop or mood lighting is cheating, but he wanted the images to have a deeper meaning. During the shoots, he  only used a single light against a white or grey background. And he has created some lifelike moments with this minimal setup on a Nikon camera—the [traditional] 8 x 10 with the sheet films.

Atul Kasbekar's Honest: Portrait of Character stands as one of India's most significant contemporary photography exhibitions, celebrating acclaimed character actors through minimalist black-and-white portraiture while highlighting artistic excellence, visibility and the evolving language of celebrity photography in Indian cinema.

During my tenure at Filmfare (2000-2009), Kasbekar had been commissioned to shoot cover story photographs. These for sure were dazzlers, especially of  a candid moment with Anil Kapoor, sans make-up, in a plain white shirt and a pair of jeans. However, I did sense a quality of arrogance in Kasbekar, particularly when he made a young woman staffer of Filmfare, wait for hours till nightfall, to hand over a sheaf of images. I had to berate him for that: his studio was then located in a lonely stretch of Parel, and the staffer was panicking about missing the last local train to her Chembur home.  Besides that incident, there had been no glitches.

I’ve seen Atul Kasbekar weeping copiously at the funeral rites of Gautam Rajadhyaksha, whom he had considered a mentor. He could be emotionally distraught, I detected, unlike the suave and self-contained persona he projected.

Behind the Camera: Atul Kasbekar's Personal Evolution

To plug you into Kasbekar’s backstory. He studied at the Campion School and Jai Hind College, strived to graduate in Chemical Engineering, only to drop out to pursue his incipient passion for photography, graduating from Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, U.S.  

Once established as one of the foremost fashion, advertising and  celebrity photographers, his leap forward was to form a production company Ellipsis Entertainment with partners including the multi-media expert Tanuj Garg. So far, the company has co-produced the films Neerja (2016), Tumhari Sulu (2017), Why Cheat India (2019) and Looop Lapeta (2022), with more in the pipeline.

From Fashion Photographer to Film Producer

With so much on his plate, the Honest: Portrait of Character is, to put it mildly, commendable. Every portrait is shot raw without filters to capture real textures, body language and expressions in impromptu moments like laughing, glaring, playful or in deep contemplation.   

Although legendary photographers like Henri-Cartier Bresson believed that an image is an ‘interpretation’ and ‘not realism’, Kasbekar doesn’t quite follow that rule, detailing the lines and scars, resonating the memories and medals of a life well-lived.   

Honest: A Landmark in Indian Portrait Photography

Usually, with actors of any tier, while being lensed, the attempt is to put their best-looking self forward, which can be further achieved by AI retouching and editing software. In fact, here  it is just the opposite, let the actor do his or her own thing as they would in everyday life.  

“It’s been a while since anyone has experienced what real images are,” Kasbekar has concluded, in dire contrast to those glossy, titillating Kingfisher calendars. But for image-makers like Suresh Natarajan occasionally, this is a first. So Mr Kasbekar, can we ask an encore’?