By the time I arrived in the early morning, Pintu and his wife were already at work making sweets in an outbuilding near their home in a small village near Santiniketan. Inside, there was a wood-fired, hand-built clay stove. The walls were black as pitch from smoke, and the only light came in from the door and one window. When I first walked in, they were frying pantua, cottage cheese–based sweets, tossing them into the air to help them brown evenly. This was done with a flourish, and each time they tossed them a little higher than you would think. I was struck by how gorgeous the light was and took this shot. Kelly Campbell
Photographer Kelly Campbell traveled to the college town of Santiniketan in West Bengal to photograph Pintu Roy, a second-generation maker of mishti, Bengali sweets. Commenting on the photographs in this gallery, Kelly describes what it was like to capture a day in the life of the sweets maker.