Shutter island: See how one studio is reviving the alchemy of photos without film

Step into Studio Goppo in Santiniketan, West Bengal, and one could well be back in the 1850s. The cameras are wooden, perched on wood-and-brass tripods. Images are captured on glass plates coated in chemicals.

There are few studios in the world that still use these techniques. Referred to as historical photography, it is a medium that harks back to an era before film.

Each image is cumbersome and laborious to produce. But it does what smartphones and Instagram simply cannot: it allows the photographer to create something unique. And because of all the labour and craft involved, each image holds within it the story of how it was made. This is where the studio gets its name (Goppo is Bengali for Tale).

This promise, of a one-of-a-kind image crafted by hand, is what draws photographers to this space, which holds small workshops two or three times a year, to spread its philosophy on the medium.

Now in its tenth year, Studio Goppo is also sending little ripples out into the world, in the form of new kinds of photo art being produced by former students, and bought and sold at exhibition. And more studios dedicated to historical photography.

He was considering moving to Italy to study historical photography, when he came upon this 800-sq-ft space, in searches online. Each workshop involved working with new materials and devices. Sessions were conducted by founders Arpan Mukherjee and Shreya Mukherjee, professors of graphic art and art history respectively; and photo artist Manoj Biswas. “I was so happy when I found them,” says Nayak, 58.

The core of the Goppo philosophy is an unusual one, in a time of social media: A photograph ought to have meaning and purpose, says Arpan Mukherjee, 46.

Mukherjee, a professor of graphic art at Visva Bharati, the university at Santiniketan, began his journey with historical photography in 2003, when he started tinkering with old film cameras, and making his own. His partner Shreya Mukherjee, 43, a visiting professor of art history at Burdwan University’s College of Art and Design, was then researching the history of pre-digital photography in India.

Eventually, they decided to share their ideas around the medium. Rather than an exhibition, they decided to take the workshops route. Goppo remains a small operation, by design; one that seeks only to sustains itself, they say. Former students return for refresher courses, or to learn a different technique, and this helps.

Nayak has attended two workshops so far, one each on gum printing and albumen printing. Some of his work was shown in an exhibition in Kolkata in 2022, and four pieces sold, for ₹30,000 each. “That has given me the confidence to dedicate myself to alternative photography full-time,” he says.

Other former students have opened their own alternative-photography studios, such as Kanike in Bengaluru, co-founded by Vivek Muthuramalingam, and Maze Collective in Delhi, founded by Ashish Sahoo.

“This gives me great satisfaction,” Mukherjee says. “We always wanted more studios like ours in this part of the world, to spread a different philosophy of photography.”