Ace photographer Raghu Rai has selected 50 of his best photographs for an exhibition, one for every year of his work in the field. He tells Shrabasti Mallik that photography happened to him by accident
At the very entrance of the Ojas Art, you will come across a small photograph of a baby donkey (a colt) curiously looking into the lens of the camera. The photograph is in black and white and has no other scenery or backdrop as the baby animal takes up the entire frame. This was the first photograph that Raghu Rai ever took and it dates back to the year 1965, the year he began the making of a legend.
“This photo,” Rai said, “was the beginning of my tryst with photography. I asked my friend for his camera and I was trying to take a picture of this baby donkey but he kept running. I ran after him and after a while he stopped and let me take his photo.” It was the same photograph that his brother sent to the london Times, and they printed the photograph half page with Rai’s credits. “That was the beginning for me. I never had any plans to become a photographer otherwise, but that encouraged me,” he told us.
They say a picture speaks a thousand words. True. But, when a moment in time is captured in the lens of Rai, it speaks a million. In a career spanning over five decades, he has been there and captured it — every beautiful aspect of India. He has carefully chosen 50 of his best works, one for each year in the field, for an exhibit titled Picturing Time: The greatest photographs of Raghu Rai. To us, it was no less than a retrospective which will continue till January 31.
In one part of the gallery, portraits of greats like Arundhati Roy, Ustad Bismillah Khan and Indira Gandhi graced the walls. One would also find photographs of Pandit Ravi Shankar, Bal Thackeray and MS Subbulakshmi at the exhibit. “These personalities have a special energy and character which is transmitted through the lens into a photograph. You do not have to wait for the right moment to happen because when you concentrate on them, they reveal themselves,” he pointed out. The best example of this explanation we found in the photograph of Mother Teresa near the staircase of Mother’s House in Kolkata with a statue of Jesus at the backdrop.
From theghats of Varanasi to that in Kolkata, from Kumortuli in Kolkata to the vibrant hues of the Pushkar mela in Rajasthan and from Dargah Ajmer Sharif to the Akshardham Temple in Delhi — nothing has escaped the lens of this great photographer. Handpicked pictures of the rocks in Hampi, the myriad activities around Humayun’s Tomb and the sadhus of the Mahakumbh Mela are also a part of the exhibit in the gallery whose curatorial director is Anubhav Nath.
He contemplated the bygone time when there were a handful of photographers and how limited the access was to high quality lenses and cameras. “There were plenty of restrictions because we had limited number of lenses and cameras. But the intensity and seriousness with which we worked was unimaginable,” he said, clearly pointing out the difference with digital photography.
He dislikes the fact that most people, in possession of a DSlR, treat photography as a joke. “They forget the relevance of things and just keep clicking. I was reborn with digital photography. For others, it might be a joke but it is a wonderful thing. It gives you the freedom and the control to capture what your eyes see. We understand that because we had just one roll and 36 exposures. We did not have the luxury of a 36 gb card where you can take a100 shots of the same picture,” he explained.
Rai believes that every picture has a significance in time and are big and small moments of life in building a personality, character and identity. “You just have to be true to your craft,” he concluded.