Date: 11 and 12 September 2026
Time:
Day 1, Friday, 11 September: 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Day 2, Saturday, 12 September: 6:30 AM to 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Venue: Emami Art gallery; field sessions at Nimtala Ghat to Kumartuli and Sealdah / Koley Market
Emami Art presents শহরপাঠ (Reading the City), a two-day guided street photography workshop with Partha Sengupta, one of Kolkata's most rigorous documentary photographers, whose long-form projects have moved between the borderlands of Bengal, the everyday life of refugee neighbourhoods, and, most recently, the changing rivers of the Himalayas.
Across four sessions on 11 and 12 September 2026, participants will walk Calcutta with Sengupta, moving between classroom time at Emami Art and field walks through Nimtala Ghat, Kumartuli, Sealdah, and Koley Market. Each classroom session is dedicated to structured review of the images made in the field. Reference material for the workshop reaches from Raghubir Singh and Raghu Rai to Ernst Haas, Harry Gruyaert, and Joel Meyerowitz, tracing very different possibilities for what the street can hold.
Street photography has never been one form. In different hands it has been document, poem, argument, method of thought, romance. Much of what any image finally becomes rests with the person holding the camera. The workshop is open to all, and takes place alongside Kushal Ray's solo exhibition শহরনামা | Calcutta 1990–1993 at Emami Art.
About the Facilitator
Partha Sengupta (b. 1970) is a Kolkata-based documentary photographer whose long-form practice moves across contested borders, refugee identity, displacement, and, in his more recent work, climate and the ecology of the Himalayan river systems. He came to photography in his early forties after over a decade in finance, and studied Documentary Photography at Counter Foto, Dhaka, where he later joined the faculty. In 2022 he completed a fellowship in Documentary Practices and Visual Journalism at the International Center of Photography, New York. His major bodies of work include Bhumiputra, The Bloodiest Border, and Enclaves.
His photographs and essays have appeared in Burn Magazine, PIX, The Polis Project, and the BBC. Exhibitions and recognitions include the Griffin Museum of Photography, US, 2026; Angkor Photo Festival & Workshops, 2023; Son of the Soil at the Parliamentary Gallery, New Delhi with SAHMAT, 2020; a Serendipity Arts Foundation grant, 2018; and a Joop Swart Masterclass nomination at World Press Photo. He is currently developing his first feature documentary, on climate change and the Himalayan rivers.
