Kushal Ray (b. 1960) is a journalist-turned-photographer-painter. He started his career with The Telegraph newspaper in 1982 as a sports journalist, quit journalism in 1991, and began working as an independent photographer. In 1995 he joined Arts Acre, Kolkata, taking part in many group art exhibitions while two of his solos were held at Kolkata’s Academy of Fine Arts in 2001 and 2002.
In 1998, he began documenting the everyday life of a joint family in Kolkata which spanned more than a decade and culminated in his book Intimacies published by Niyogi Books in 2012, curated by Ina Puri with an essay by author Kunal Basu. His first solo photography exhibition was Everyday Life of an Exotic Land, Piramal Gallery, Mumbai (1998). A solo institutional presentation of his photographs curated by Amit Chaudhuri was also held at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (2010). His first solo in Kolkata was No One is a Stranger: Photographs by Kushal Ray curated by Swastik Pal at Kolkata Centre for Creativity, Kolkata (2025).
His photographs have been part of many group exhibitions including Relative Values: Some Current Trends in Indian Photography curated by Sunil Gupta and organized by the University of Southampton, UK (2007); the 1st Singapore International Photography Festival (2008); Click! Contemporary Indian Photography, Delhi (2008); Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, London (2009-10); an exhibition at the British Museum, London under the aegis of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2014) where images from Intimacies, the Ladakh series, and the portrait project Little Cinderellas Who Grow Up to Be Sour were screened during a public talk in the museum’s main auditorium; and Bengal Divided curated by Sarker Protick and Munem Wasif, Dhaka and Singapore (2017); among several others.
Ray was feted with a Senior Fellowship by the Ministry of Culture in 2011 for his documentation of the Indian Railways, which was published in the photobook Once on a Train while Intimacies was nominated for the Best Photobook award at Le Bal des Débutantes, Paris by Dayanita Singh in 2012. He is the first recipient of the Dignity Grant awarded by Dayanita Singh. Photographs from his early Ladakh series are held in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
He lives and works in Kolkata, India.
