Raghu Rai

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This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. Additional information may please be sent as messages to the Facebook community, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be gratefully acknowledged in your name.

A brief profile, as in 2015

Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today

Saints and sinners, politicians and performers, history and humdrum reality. Fifty years of India through the eyes of an impassioned archivist.

Indira Gandhi, 1969; One of his favourite subjects. Here she is with MLAs from Gujarat, showing why she was called the "only man in her cabinet". Don't miss the look of expectancy on the face of her long-time assistant R.K. Dhawan, notes Rai.
From: Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today

Bal Thackeray, 2002; "I expected Bal Thackeray to be a brusque and intimidating man, but he was rather friendly. At noon, he informed me that [ India Today] was time for his wine and cigar. Without his pretension he posed with his cigar for my camera."
From: From: Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today

Jarnail Singh, Bhindranwale- 1984; "I used to call him paaji, which infuriated his supporters. They once threatened me. I said he likes it, what's your problem?" says Rai. Here he is at the Golden Temple before Operation Bluestar.
From: Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today

Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai, 1978; "Jayaprakash Narayan had to decide who would be the Prime Minister. Naturally, Morarji Desai went to him", says Rai who took this unusual picture by switching sides from where a swarm of photographers were positioned.
From: Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today

Lal Bahadur Shastri, 1966; This was the last time Shastri came home. "I was a junior photographer with no press card. I kept a respectful distance from the grieving family in what became my first political picture of the Statesman.
From: Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today

Satyajit Ray- 1989; Rai was shooting Satyajit Ray on location for his film Ghare-Baire. There was a break and Ray lay down on a bed on the set. Rai went behind the bed and called out to him, "Manikda." He turned. This is that moment.
From: Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today

"All the photographers were positioned at the foot of Jayaprakash Narayan's bed. I thought Morarji Desai's ears were so distinctive, why not go behind him and shoot JP from there." Typical of Raghu Rai, who for 50 years has been elevating the humdrum news photograph into an art form. Since the time his photographer brother S. Paul handed him his first camera, an Agfa Super Silette, to now, with his digital Nikon D810 and D750, Rai has been stealing beauty and capturing history one frame at a time. With his camera almost as a third limb, he has shot politicians and performers, saints and sinners, artists and ingenues-for 10 years with India Today. In Picturing Time: The Greatest Photographs of Raghu Rai, he says he wants his photographs to reflect life's longing for itself. As he writes in the introduction to the book, "Darshan is not merely seeing a particular person or place, but the experiencing of the reality of a place, a person, the physical and the inner aura, reflected in its entirety. That is what I feel great photography is all about."

From the swirl of dust as Indira Gandhi's helicopter takes off from drought-hit Rajasthan to a chaiwala balancing a tray of cups with his body almost entirely suspended from a Delhi-Mumbai train, Rai, who trained as a civil engineer, has been trying to connect with anything and everything, significant or mundane, precious or ordinary. "When you start caring for everything, everything around you starts caring for you in some way or the other, so you stand connected. You connect with every inch of space and respond. It's having a complete awareness of things, and by that I mean not only the physical but also the emotional and spiritual aspect. Photography has been his life, his karma and dharma, which is why he is never satisfied until his aha moment-even if it means asking the prime minister of India to walk on a two-and-a-half-foot parapet in Shimla to get the famous silhouette against the evening sky or borrowing a transport plane from the Indian Air Force chief to fly over the Taj Mahal for an hour in the morning and evening to capture it from the air.

An eclectic retrospective of India by one of its most devoted archivists, Picturing Time is a coffee table book with soul.

Sam Manekshaw, 1973: President V.V. Giri is appointing the general to the five-star rank of field marshal; the first army chief to receive that title. It looks, of course, as if he is twirling the famous moustache.
From: Kaveree Bamzai, Raghu Rai's people, India Today