Photographer Ram Rahman shares photographs and memories of an American music world legend who loved the subcontinent. Dec 12, 2020 · 11:30 am Harold Leventhal (left) with Ram Rahman in the blue kurta, Sunil Janah (seated centre) and others. | Author provided.
In August 1998, I had curated a large exhibition of the great photographer Sunil Janah in New York. Kumar Kalantri, an eccentric desi with great energy had set up a large loft internet café and Gallery on Broadway near New York University He gave us a free hand to mount any show we liked.
I persuaded Janah to bring a few suitcases full of vintage prints from his home in Wimbledon, England. We mounted this exhibition with no funds, no frames and on Jerry-rigged foam core boards – a real jugaad job. To show his work in its complete form I decided to exhibit almost 600 images from the 1940s through the ’60s. It was the biggest retrospective ever of his work.