2018 Articles

A Cinematic Imagination: Josef Wirsching and the Bombay Talkies

Mukherjee, Debashree

This essay discusses the career and craft of Josef Wirsching, a German cinematographer who migrated to India in the 1930s and made a deep impact on the aesthetic form and production techniques of Bombay cinema. It was written as a companion piece to the first public exhibition of production stills and publicity photographs from the Wirsching family archive. These photographs give us unprecedented access to the aesthetic decisions, creative communities, and international exchanges that were vital to filmmaking in late colonial India.