THROUGH THE LENS OF NAVROZE CONTRACTOR

“PHOTOGRAPHY STRICTLY PROHIBITED”

Navroze Contractor or NC as some of us loved to call him, was a man of many passions. He studied fine arts, played cricket and the drums, was a connoisseur of Jazz and Hindustani classical music, an adventurer who rafted down the flooded rivers of Gujarat and rode pillion on microlites, loved good food and single malts, was a raconteur who could have you rolling with laughter on the floor, wrote for auto magazines and an absolutely delightful book about his experiences of shooting a film in China in the 80s.

A cinephile and one of the most accomplished documentary cinematographers of India who also shot 11 feature films, he was also a prolific still photographer whose collection of photographs of jazz musicians is now with the Smithsonian Museum, and an avid, very avid, biker. 

Above all, he loved life. And he loved people. He had the unique gift of connecting with people, of all ages and across cross-sections of society. Growing up in a time when the country offered space for multiple viewpoints, and artists of all ilk, poets, writers, painters, filmmakers, believed their work could contribute to the creation of an equitable nation, he had aligned with progressive politics that empathized with the underprivileged and the marginalized. This informed the way he captured people on his camera; always with compassion and never allowing the camera to impose, intrude, or be patronizing. 

Starting from the early 1960s there are rarely any photos of him, and there are hundreds of them, where he could be seen without a camera not dangling from his neck or the shoulder. But he was never a photographer in the classical sense, he rarely ever pursued a subject or story. For him, the camera was an extension of his ‘eye’, to capture the world as he saw it. A documentation of his journey through life, in a way, that was not even necessary to share with the world.

Sanjiv Shah

The selection of 15 photographs exhibited at KPFF 2025 is made from a larger curation by Anuj Ambalal, Himanshu Panchal and Sanjiv Shah from over 20,000 images for a photobook.