Sam Tata returned to Shanghai and photographed, for some months accompanied by Cartier-Bresson, the occupation of the city by the new Communist regime.
26 Facts About Sam Tata
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Via Hong Kong and India, Sam Tata emigrated to Montreal in 1956, where he created documentary stills for the National Film Board and continued photography for various publications.
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Sam Tata became known for his portraits of Canadian artists and authors.
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Sam Tata's work has been the subject of books and touring exhibitions.
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Sam Tata's photographs are found in several institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada.
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Samuel Bejan Tata was born in Shanghai, China, on September 30,1911, to a mercantile Parsi family.
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Sam Tata went to Shanghai Public School, and then studied business for two years at the University of Hong Kong.
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Sam Tata took up photography at the age of twenty-four, and was one of the founding members of the Shanghai Camera Club.
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Sam Tata became adept in his early photographs with the use of lighting and the additive techniques favoured by the pictorialists.
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Sam Tata's focus on portraiture in these years was partly dictated by the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937, and Tata was not able to take up photography full-time until 1946 when he arrived in Calcutta.
11.
Several months later, at another show sponsored by the Bombay Art Society, Sam Tata met French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, and through his influence and mentorship, was galvanized to take up photojournalism with renewed vigour.
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Sam Tata began to contribute to Bombay periodicals such as Trend and Flashlight.
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In that year, he married 19 year-old Marketa Langer, a Sudenten Czech, who like Sam Tata, had been raised in Shanghai.
14.
Sam Tata made a trip to Kashmir and India in 1955, and his photo-essay, "Himalyan Pilgrimage", was published by National Geographic in October 1956.
15.
Sam Tata immigrated, with his wife and daughter Antonia, to Canada in 1956 and settled in Montreal.
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Sam Tata quickly found work doing stills for documentary films made at the National Film Board, and he became a photo editor for The Montrealer magazine.
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Partly due to their age difference, Sam Tata's marriage ended in divorce.
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Sam Tata's photographs has appeared in publications such as Macleans, Chatelaine, and Time.
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Sam Tata recoiled at being a mere illustrator to a written text as his aim was for the images to stand on their own.
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Sam Tata came closest to this ideal in his submissions to the magazine Perspectives, where he was allowed to choose from his photo files.
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Sam Tata preferred to take pictures with a 35mm camera and use the available light in the homes of his subjects, where they would feel more at ease and their personalities be more fully evoked by posing amidst their personal possessions.
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Sam Tata's flowing conversational style, abounding in stories and anecdotes, helped allay sitters who were sometimes wary of being photographed.
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Sam Tata's experience was that the better portraits often started to appear in the middle of the film roll, after subjects had relaxed their guard and became active participants.
24.
Sam Tata received the Canada Council's Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award and was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
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Sam Tata was awarded in 1990 the lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators.
26.
Sam Tata died on July 3,2005, at the age of 93 in Sooke, British Columbia, Canada.