'Lyrical Lens': How Assam’s Nalini Baruah turned nudity into art and the camera found its poet

“A photograph is the harmonious outcome of various arts and skills.”

Assam’s renowned photographer Nalini Kanta Baruah’s work is far more than the act of selecting an angle and pressing a shutter. It is art, layered, deliberate, and quietly transcendent. The documentary 'Lyrical Lens' captures this essence, opening with a series of bold portraits of naked women, revealed in their own aura, beautiful and almost majestic.

Baruah is perhaps one of the first in not just Northeast India but the entire country to have clicked a nude photograph — a work that made its way onto the pages of a newspaper - 'Nilachal'. His lens has also traversed battlefields, capturing the Indo-Chinese war era, Army portraits enveloped with grit, and even controversial political specimens that carry the weight of their time.

The images, some dating back to the 1940s, carry an authenticity rare for their time. Themes of history, femininity, nudity, and the natural world merge seamlessly, each frame holding its own world. It is almost unbelievable that such an approach found its way into photography in those years - and it is to this ode that 'Lyrical Lens' pays tribute, celebrating his legacy.

"...The bosom with two tender wildflowers
Warm yet pouting
Untouched, fragile-Pearls, pearls
Unalloyed yearnings of a shielded cherub
Tangerines of dew falling drop by drop..."

The film begins with Baruah’s solemn Assamese voice reciting these lines, the poetry flowing into the images - black-and-white portraits - in their full glory. Together, they unfold like a poem set against a countryside backdrop, a quiet river gliding beneath cloud-heavy skies.

Lenses - when wielded with the power of Baruah’s - reveal that it is not only the glass of the camera, but the eyes behind it, trained to spot beauty and cradle it in silence. His frames are never ‘too much’, nor are they ‘too little’; each holds its magnificence like a manifested piece, carrying the weight of sheer dedication and a story that is not quite visible to the common eye.

Beyond the stills lies the artist's voice - steady, unhurried - taking centre stage through the documentary like a companion’s arm in a lover’s walk, shielding each image as if it were something precious.

"Till today though, I have not taken my favourite photograph. I am yet to click my best photo." It is a confession that lingers long after it is spoken, capturing the essence of Nalini Baruah far better than any biography could. It is part promise, part prayer. "If ever I take a photo which satisfies me, I wouldn't mind dying afterwards" - it is this rare humility that perhaps not only defines his journey but seeps into every frame, making his photographs feel less like images and more like breathing testaments to his calm demeanour.

Patience, Baruah explains, is the true essence of photography—a discipline that stands in sharp contrast to the world’s current frenzy of impulsive clicks, made even more relentless by the advent of camera phones. He recalls once finding a skull, “with grass growing through its empty sockets,” a haunting reminder, as he adds - "...came from dust and returned to dust."

Directed by Ankuran Dutta, the documentary unfolds as a series of unpolished frames with raw footage stitched together without the sham of heavy editing or aesthetic layering. The intent is clear: to let the viewer walk alongside an acclaimed photographer without any distraction. Yet, a certain clarity feels absent. The narrative might have deepened had we seen Baruah in action, clicking a photograph on the spot, letting the audience witness the moment.

Still, this is far from a mere celebration of a decorated career. Between the visions on screen lie anecdotes, recollections of struggles, and glimpses into his personal likes and dislikes - everything that shapes the man behind the lens. 

With a career spanning over eighty years, Nalini Baruah has not merely etched his place in the world’s photographic chronicles...he has set a benchmark for those who come after. His career has taken him from the banks of the Brahmaputra to the global stage, with works reaching New York, London, and New Jersey, and recognition from the American Photography Association — yet he remains deeply rooted in his ethos.

“My art is not for sale,” he asserts, his integrity as much a signature as his photographs.

In a time when the female form is so often disregarded, nudity dismissed, nature left unguarded, and human beauty overlooked, Baruah’s vision reveals another world — where a woman’s body is revered, nudity honoured, the earth is cherished, and every angle is seen through eyes truly awake.

"...Which path shall I take?
Where dreams may be grabbed and turned real
Where I can ask the moon to gift me a star
Or else swim in sorrow!
You
Which way to go? In which direction to proceed?
Oh, go carefully
In the fog, you may mistake the sun for the moon
Floodwaters hiding in the sand may appear as oasis 
Which path must I take 
Stepping onto the path bereft of moonlight
The path ravaged by the Brahmaputra to lose sigh of the Earth
You
Whither, in which direction?"

It is here, in his own words and images, that one realises: for Baruah, photography is not merely the task of capturing a scene, but the art of navigating the fine line between truth and illusion, beauty and passing — and always, framing each moment with eyes wide open.