Satyajit Ray
Plates contributed
The 1 plate attributed to Satyajit Ray in the 1955 MoMA Master Checklist (Exhibition #569).
| ID | Country | Section | Year | View |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| photo-0081 | India | Family and children | — | Clervaux |
Notes
One plate in the catalog (count verified by strict-match grep against data/photographs.csv 2026-05-10): photo-0081 (Section 10 Family Activities, India, “Satyajit Ray, Indian, 16 x 21 1/4 cm”). The MoMA Master Checklist credits the photograph under Ray’s own name, NOT under any of his Calcutta employers (advertising agency where he was art director, or publishing house where he was commercial illustrator). The 16 x 21 1/4 cm dimensions are consistent with a horizontal-format still photograph. Born 1921; died 1992 per src-britannica-satyajit-ray (in repo, fetched 2026-05-10; named author W. Andrew Robinson; lead verbatim: “Satyajit Ray (born May 2, 1921, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died April 23, 1992, Calcutta) was a Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator”). The May 2, 1921 / April 23, 1992 day-month tokens are independently corroborated at Tier 3 by src-wikipedia-satyajit-ray-pointer (in repo, fetched 2026-05-10; infobox bday: 1921-05-02; infobox-data: 23 April 1992); two-source agreement promotes the year-tokens (1921 / 1992) above pointer status. Day-level tokens remain at Tier 3. Wikidata Q8873 corroborates the structured record (+1921-05-02 / +1992-04-23, fetched 2026-05-10 to .scratch/wikidata-ray.json). Calcutta (now Kolkata) birthplace and death-place verbatim per src-britannica-satyajit-ray (the lead-paragraph and the structured birth/death sidebar both render “Calcutta [now Kolkata]”). Lifelong Calcutta residence per src-wikipedia-satyajit-ray-pointer body text (Lake Avenue / Lake Temple Road / Bishop Lefroy Road apartments). NATIONALITY: Britannica frames Ray as “Bengali motion-picture director, writer, and illustrator who brought the Indian cinema to world recognition”; Wikipedia categorical metadata records “Bengali film directors”, “Indian children’s writers”, etc. The MoMA Master Checklist credits the FoM plate as “Indian”. The canonical “Indian” form is preserved here (matching the checklist), with “Bengali” as the primary cultural / linguistic identification per Britannica. Pre-cinema career as illustrator and book-jacket designer (the period most relevant to his FoM contribution) verbatim per src-britannica-satyajit-ray (“Ray in 1943 got a job in a British-owned advertising agency, became its art director within a few years, and also worked for a publishing house as a commercial illustrator, becoming a leading Indian typographer and book-jacket designer”). Calcutta Film Society co-founding 1947 / Renoir 1949 encouragement / Pather Panchali 1955 release per same; Pather Panchali Cannes 1956 award per same. The 1955 release of Pather Panchali is contemporaneous with the FoM opening at MoMA in January 1955; these two events are independent in Ray’s biography but the year-coincidence is biographically notable. Britannica describes Ray as “a leading Indian typographer and book-jacket designer” but does not separately discuss his still photography practice; Wikipedia’s article likewise emphasizes filmmaking, writing, illustration, and music with no significant block on still photography (verified by string-search 2026-05-10). Neither Britannica nor Wikipedia mentions FoM by name on Ray’s biography page (verified by string-search 2026-05-10; “Family of Man” / “Steichen” return 0 occurrences in both fetched pages); the connection to FoM is anchored at the plate level only, via the in-repo MoMA Master Checklist. The fact that the Master Checklist credits Ray (rather than an Indian photo agency) suggests the print reached MoMA via an individual submission or a U.S. / Bengal Film Society contact, rather than via the agency-mediated routes that supplied many Asian/Pacific FoM plates (e.g. G. T. Sun Company for Yosuke Yamahata, Ars Camera for Eiju Otaki); the exact pathway is not documented in any source fetched this round. The plate-attribution mapping (which photograph) is NOT anchored in any source fetched this round.
External biography
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Satyajit-Ray
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