An upcoming exhibition at the Dilip Piramal Art Gallery will showcase the rare and expansive archive of Kamat Foto Flash, a studio that chronicled six decades of Hindi cinema.
By Aishwarya Bodke
A tightly framed close-up of Guru Dutt—his piercing eyes probing yours—ubiquitously accompanied his masterpiece Pyaasa, from hoardings to posters and lobby cards. His face fills the image, lit in soft contrast through what looks like a library shelf. This photograph by Damodar Kamat, stripped of context and dialogue, still serves as a threshold for the brilliant chiaroscuro in the 1957 classic. Adopted as a still from the film, not many know that it was actually taken at the manager’s desk in a small ground-floor space at Mahalaxmi’s Famous Studio, then home to Kamat Foto Flash.
Ask Neha Kamat—the third-generation custodian of the photo studio—what her most cherished photograph from the archive of nearly four lakh negatives is, and she instantly picks Dutt’s steady stare.
Set up in 1945 by Damodar Kamat, the studio has been an integral part of the Hindi film industry for at least six decades, capturing publicity stills for around 800 films and 350 producers. The earliest photo in the repository is a portrait of Motilal from the 1948 film Gajre. The actor is perhaps best remembered for his portrayal of Chunni Babu in Bimal Roy’s Devdas (1955). As years passed, Kamat Foto Flash, too, evolved with the stylistic shifts in photography. From black-and-white studio shots and film stills, it transitioned to Eastmancolor and then to full-fledged colour photography in the 1970s. During this period, handcoloured prints became common as colour processing was a costly affair. The first film in the archive that exists in colour is Sangam (1964). It is unique, as a custom stand was designed to hold two cameras: one for colour and the other for black-and-white. This setup allowed the photographers to capture the same shot simultaneously in both formats. As the era of analogue photography gradually came to an end at the turn of the century, the studio quickly adapted to the digital age. Among its contemporary works is the 2017 revenge drama Mom, starring Sridevi.
Without missing a beat, Neha traces forgotten stories and timelines from a single glance at the photos carefully enveloped in butter paper, stored in paper boxes. A striking Meena Kumari from Benazir (1964), resplendent in her finery, makes a cameo appearance from one of the boxes. Another image in the archive came about when ‘the tragedy queen’ was catching a break after a scene in Phool aur Patthar (1966)—a faint gleam of glycerine still visible under her eyes. As the lights were being adjusted overhead for the next scene, a serendipitous spotlight landed on her, prompting Damodar Kamat to quickly take the shot. It was he who captured the actress in some of her most memorable frames.
“That is how he liked to work, being a fly on the wall,” Neha tells us as she fondly sifts through the photos. “Everyone who has worked with him speaks highly of him as a professional. My father was 13 when [Damodar Kamat] passed away, so I never really got to know my grandfather. These photos have taken the shape of my memory of him,” she adds.
With a clientele that included doyens of the industry—Raj Kapoor, Bimal Roy, Kamal Amrohi and Vijay Anand, to name a few—Kamat Foto Flash became an invisible presence in every major Bollywood film until the 1990s. While several iconic stills from the archive have resurfaced across popular culture, a large part of it remains unseen.
An upcoming exhibition at the Dilip Piramal Art Gallery titled Timeless Frames: A Photographic Journey Through Indian Cinema, presented by Shivdutt Das, Chairman of Shivdutt Das Charity Foundation and Parvez Damania, aviation expert and connoisseur of the arts, and curated by Mark Manuel, writer, columnist and former editor of Bombay Times, will open the vast repository for public viewing this September. With specially curated music for the opening and stories behind the shots weaving the display together, the exhibition marks the studio’s first-ever public showcase. It seeks to honour the cultural memory that Kamat Foto Flash has preserved through fleeting moments in the spectacle of showbiz. However, at its heart, it is a family’s enduring history intertwined with that of Hindi cinema.
Of the illustrious roster of stars immortalised by Kamat, a special place is reserved for Dutt, with whom he also shared a close friendship. Neha recalls that a few weeks before his passing, Dutt had stayed at their residence, when the family lived in Dadar. In a fitting tribute, the exhibition includes a section dedicated to Dutt in his centenary year.
Kamat’s passing in 1967 left behind a legacy too enormous for his young son Vidyadhar to shoulder immediately. Two of Kamat’s colleagues, Kamlakar S. Wagh and Shantaram Samant, became the pillars of the company, refusing to let it shut down. Neha shares, “When age did not allow them to come to work, they handed over the keys to my father. I would not be sitting here if it weren’t for them.”
Her father, Neha reminisces, would go for shoots along with a string of photographers. “I would never miss an opportunity to go to a set if Madhuri Dixit was acting,” she says. “I remember going to the studio and helping with the making of the glass slides displayed in theatres for upcoming films. I was always fascinated by the dark room,” she adds.
Alongside her father, Neha now looks after the archiving, cataloguing and upkeep of the collection, while also working as a costume designer and line producer. A significant part of the archive has also been digitised. She explains, “The negatives are very fragile, and we do not trust anybody to handle them with the same care. My father does all the scanning. He is an expert. We have archived around three to four lakh negatives. We stopped counting after that.”
Today, Kamat Foto Flash stands as the definitive photographic record of an era in Hindi cinema. Filmmakers, scholars, researchers and fans turn to them for their wealth of information and images. Reality shows with retrospective presentations are regular consumers as well. An unusual request once came Neha’s way when a popular broadcast news channel reached out asking for photos of underworld mafia figures, notoriously linked to Bollywood in the 1980s.
The inquiry does not seem as odd given the studio’s extensive vault that has resurrected stories that would have otherwise been lost. How else would we know that the sets of Dev Anand’s 1971 musical drama Haré Rama Haré Krishna were visited by the then Prince of Nepal? Or that Anand was the original choice for the 1966 thriller Teesri Manzil, a film now synonymous with Shammi Kapoor’s electrifying presence. “We don’t speak without photographic evidence,” Neha chuckles.
Several such photos regularly do the rounds on social media platforms, dipped in nostalgia and savoured by lovers of Hindi cinema. However, they remain uncredited. Instagram and Facebook pages are attributed as sources, but rarely does the true fountainhead find mention. Prints and copies of Kamat’s photographs and lobby cards turn up in Chor Bazaar and flea markets, but Neha has learned to look past them.
Photographers were once among the most important people on set, present from the narration stage and expected to grasp the significance of crucial scenes. The images of Kamat Foto Flash bear the imprint of a cinematic past. It is a responsibility its custodians do not take lightly, for the archive coexists amid camera phones, screenshots and paparazzi culture. That these photos will adorn the walls of an art gallery is only a reinforcement of their beauty, coupled with a sincere hope that future generations will meaningfully engage with the archive.
This article was originally published in the September 2025 issue of ON Stage.
