Curiosity, they say, killed the cat. But in Soumya Shankar Ghosal’s case, it encouraged an artist. He would gaze longingly at the forbidden treasure trove housed in his grandfather’s wooden cupboard. The young Ghosal was strictly forbidden from even breathing near those mechanical cameras, a prohibition that only increased their mystique.

“I found it so strange,” he says, “that I could freely use the landline phone, dial numbers, and speak with people, but those cameras were completely untouchable. I would wonder what made them so frightening that a child’s hands could not even touch their surfaces.”

A jump cut to today: that once-forbidden child has become one of Kolkata’s most celebrated photographers and has earned the esteemed title of Canon Maestro through decades of dedication to his craft. Quite recently, his photograph was selected for display at the Benaras Literature Festival alongside works from the country’s top photographers.

When asked what started his passion for photography, he pauses. “Even after all these years, all this recognition, I still cannot pinpoint the exact moment,” he admits with refreshing honesty. “I never received any formal training in photography.” His voice takes on a contemplative tone as he reflects on this absence of traditional education. “At this age, I have come to believe it is something in the genes—something passed down through generations. I am a big believer in that.”

The conversation drifts toward Ghosal’s youthful dalliance with painting and its impact on his photographic eye. He speaks of photography’s origins in painting as a mechanical extension of centuries-old pursuits, how bitumen, a light-sensitive asphalt, was once used to literally capture the presence of light. Early experience with brush and canvas, he argues, instils an intuitive grasp of composition. For Ghosal, those paintings may have been childhood experiments, but they were foundational lessons in visual structure all the same. Ultimately, he sees photography and painting not as separate art forms but as converging expressions striving for one resonant image.

Ghosal’s interest in Kolkata’s hand-pulled rickshaws began in the early 2000s, when he received a heritage documentation grant. His first experience was at Howrah Station: he prepared himself for the ride and found it uncomfortable, each swing of the carriage reminding him of the human labour beneath the seat. In spite of his initial uneasiness, he was determined to document this disappearing means of transportation.

After months of photography, he realised that rickshaws in North, Central, and South Kolkata had individual personalities—very different from one another. He notes, without romanticising, that alcohol and violence were part of many lives in that world. Empathising with the men who hauled these vehicles through monsoons and summer afternoons, he used a large portion of his grant to support them directly.

Pressed about the perennial debate—equipment versus artistry—he offers a nuanced answer that sidesteps photography’s most polarising question. Equipment matters, he insists, but not in the way most people think. Better gear does not automatically yield better photographs, though it remains an undeniable component of the craft. He breaks down the photographic sum into rough percentages: composition might contribute forty per cent to an image’s impact, the story another forty per cent, with equipment accounting for the remaining twenty. But these ratios shift with context; professional commercial work can demand a technical precision only high-end equipment can deliver.

I confront him with a hypothetical: stranded at Mullick Ghat with only one lens. Ghosal does not hesitate—the 24–105mm. The choice is pragmatic. The lens offers the versatility to capture both the hands threading jasmine and the sweeping panorama of the ghats at dawn. He speaks fondly of the beloved 18–55mm kit lens—its modest nature, the creative constraints it imposes—but acknowledges Mullick Ghat’s dynamic range of subjects, from macro details to the architectural grandeur lining the riverbank.

When I first heard “Oli, Goli, Pakostholi,” I assumed it was a culinary tour. After all, pakostholi literally means “stomach” in Bengali. Ghosal laughs. Here it stands for the very gut of the city—its visceral core. This project remains among his most recognised undertakings. The olis are arteries with rickshaw bells and vendors hawking brightly dyed fabrics. The golis are bylanes draped in birdcages and fragrant incense. Then we descend into the pakostholi, Kolkata’s gut, where textiles dry—ruby reds and indigo blues—casting reflections on brick walls. He confesses he does not know how to make a photo glossy, nor does he want to. His ambition is simpler and sterner: to capture the city as it lives or bleeds.

Beyond Kolkata, Benaras casts its own spell. He would jump on a train there tomorrow if he could. He ventures past the ghats and temples into hidden golis, uncovering rituals and stories most tourists miss. Old Delhi commands a similar reverence—not the sanitised New Delhi of government buildings but the crumbling heart where he once lived, absorbing its particular street aesthetic. Yet, paradoxically, when Ghosal travels purely as a tourist, his camera stays locked in the hotel room. Photography is sacred in his life: not casual documentation but a devoted practice. Tourism and photography occupy separate rooms in his mind.

The coffee grows cold; I have methodically consumed every last cookie crumb. Our conversation turns to photography’s future. I broach the subject of artificial intelligence. Denying AI’s role in photography, he argues, is not merely foolish; it is wilfully blind to a transformation already a decade in motion. It has been infiltrating our cameras since 2014 or 2015—in facial recognition that finds human eyes, in metering that adjusts exposure and white balance in real time, and in the computational decisions that enhance smartphone captures without our noticing. True, there has been a post-COVID surge in AI consciousness, he says, but that only revealed processes that had been reshaping imaging for years—especially on mobile. Adaptation is not just inevitable; it is already under way. For a decade, we were passengers in a self-driving car, only now realising human hands were not on the wheel.

What happens after the shutter snaps? I ask about his post-processing. He describes a restrained workflow: subtle noise reduction, lens corrections to straighten optical quirks, a touch of sharpening and colour correction to steer the file back toward what his eyes actually saw. Beyond that, he prefers to let the image breathe. Certain genres—advertising still-life, high-gloss wedding portraiture—demand heavier digital cosmetics; he respects those professional constraints. But his tolerance ends where authenticity goes. Anything that strips an image of its native hues or coats it in an artificial filter feels like a betrayal. He reiterates that he would not know how to make an image fashionable even if he tried.

When we speak of favourites, his influences echo some of my own: Raghu Rai and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Almost as an aside, he mentions having met both Raghu Rai and Steve McCurry—encounters that, I admit, make me a little envious. McCurry’s projects in Kolkata, he says, profoundly affected his vision, inspiring him both technically and philosophically.

By then, the formality has dissolved. I ask what lies on his horizon. The answer swerves. September will bring not another exhibition, but a book: The Corporate Arjuna: From Inner Turmoil to Strategic Clarity. The leap from street photography to corporate counsel seems abrupt until he explains: the book is applied philosophy, rooted in the Bhagavad Gita, tested against fifty modern case studies, with eighteen carefully structured toolkits. In a way, it is still documentary work—only this time the darkroom has moved to the boardroom.

As our conversation closes, I pose the inevitable questions about relevance, meaning, and success. Soumya-da’s response is disarming. He invokes our mutual admiration for Steve McCurry, whose archive spans over eight lakh frames—astonishing work—yet we can name perhaps two hundred at most. Those two hundred photographs, he argues, are what truly define McCurry’s legacy. Sometimes, a single image can be enough.

The reward, finally, lies in the pure satisfaction of seeing—that precise instant when eye, heart, and shutter arrive together. Everything else is ornament.