Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Raghu Rai, one of India’s most celebrated photographers who captured the country’s many shades through his lens, passed away at a private hospital here in the early hours of Sunday. He was 83.“Dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago but he was cured. Then it spread to the stomach, that too was cured. Recently, the cancer spread to his brain and then there were age-related issues too,” Nitin Rai, photographer and Rai’s son, told PTI.He is survived by his wife, Gurmeet, son Nitin, and daughters Lagan, Avani and Purvai.The last rites will be performed at the Lodhi Crematorium at 4 pm on Sunday.Born on December 18, 1942, in Jhang, Punjab (now in Pakistan), Rai trained as a civil engineer and took up photography at the age of 23 before joining The Statesman as its chief photographer in 1966.From that point on, his life was anything but a blur, as the next six decades of Rai’s career stand as a testament to the many moments that shaped India’s socio-political landscape.A protégé of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the prolific photographer documented some of the most poignant events in modern Indian history, including the 1972 Bangladesh refugee crisis and the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.He also captured India’s social, political and spiritual dimensions through portraits of leading figures such as Indira Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Satyajit Ray, Hariprasad Chaurasia and Bismillah Khan, offering rare and intimate perspectives into their lives.More than what made news on a daily basis, Rai’s camera captured the ordinary, the everyman, with equal, if not more, sensibility and sensitivity. The mundane was made extraordinary, often in the black and white, as if trying to soften the edges of life’s ruggedness.During his long and distinguished career, Rai worked with leading Indian magazines Sunday and India Today. Over the years, his photo essays were featured in renowned international publications, including Time, Life, The New York Times, The Independent and The New Yorker.He served three times on the jury of the World Press Photo and twice on UNESCO’s International Photo Contest jury. According to Magnum Photos, he was nominated to join the agency by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1977.Rai was awarded the Padma Shri in 1972 for his coverage of the Bangladesh war and its aftermath, among several other national and international honours.He also received the Photographer of the Year award in the United States for his photo essay Human Management of Wildlife in India, published in National Geographic.The French government conferred him with the Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 2009.Rai also left behind a large number of books, including “Raghu Rai’s India: Reflections in Colour and Reflections in Black and White” and “Exposure: Portrait Of A Corporate Crime”.According to the Raghu Rai Foundation, established in 2010 and housing an archive of over 50,000 of his images, he was working on his 57th book.(With agency inputs)
