Ace photographer Raghu Rai ditched the hi-tech camera and opted for a mobile phone to click extraordinary images. During the launch of his coffee table book, India Through the Eyes of Raghu Rai, he tells Rupinder Kaur that after experiencing a moment, he moves on
Raghu Rai has been on a clicking mission for the past 50 glorious years during which he has captured various lives, moods, moments of serenity and even shock. His images captivate and one would often wonder what goes on in the mind of the photographer, about that connect of maybe a few minutes or seconds when he pushes that button.
“It is about connecting in totality. Nothing is insignificant in this world and one must learn to connect with everything in order to know what life really is. That is what I do in my line, I connect with no responsibilities or liabilities,” shared the ace photographer. We met him during the launch of India’s first coffee table book by him titled ‘India Through the Eyes of Raghu Rai’, which is India’s first coffee table book, shot entirely on a smartphone — Gionee ElIFE E8.
The connect one can make is by “making yourself available mentally, physically and spiritually”. “And when you’re there, the situations speak to you and you listen to the whispers. In 50 years of discipline, you learn to capture those whispers, Rai explained.
Beyond the connect, we questioned him about the attachment with the subjects that the lens captures. “You don’t get attached because you live moment to moment. I’ve experienced this moment and I’m walking into another situation and that situation is another kind of energy. So the earlier one is gone,” he said.
A heavy camera equipment is what we pictured Rai with when we flipped through stunning images in both colour and black and white in the book. Behind a cart of coconuts, a bunch of boys have their moment as they stand by the sea in Trivandrum, smoke billows from the toy train at the Darjeeling railway station and then you see clouds at play in a picture captured from the plane.
“The idea of clicking using a cellphone was actually proposed to me. I went out and shot some pictures and when I saw it on screen, they looked fantastic. Now I don’t mind using a phone because if this is the quality I get. The dangerous thing is that this going to change things for the camera manufacturers and they have to think differently. But for more serious assignments, you can’t change the phone camera lens so I’ll stick to my equipment. But the beginning is unbelievable,” Rai told us.
He began working on the project in the month of August this year and shot in places of his liking from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.