The exhibition offers a glimpse into Raghu Rai's life's work in the five decades where he travelled and captured every nook and corner of our vast nation - India. Much is already known about Raghu Rai — a critically acclaimed photographer who has received national honours and gained international eminence over the years through the intensity of his photographic practice, primarily through his career as a photojournalist and photography books. This exhibition claims to focus on the enigmatic and lesser-known Raghu Rai, his extraordinary ability to gather the breadth of experiences and his all-encompassing vantage point in photographing India and her people. Very few have explored India and its multi-dimensional reality, its buzzing streets and bylanes, nooks and corners, walls and facades, bridges and bazaars like Rai has for nearly six long decades. Fascinated by the world around him, he has photographed the pulse of the 'everyday' and its simultaneous unfolding as 'live theatre'.
This exhibition focuses on the pre-digital phase of Rai's career, when he used analog/ film photography, exploring it with unprecedented fervour, freedom and imagination. From his inexhaustible archives of photographs that defy being contained easily within any of his exhibitions, a fresh slice has been pulled out which brings many extraordinary photographs into the public domain for the first time. Concentrating on his black and white photographs, this exhibition presents his longterm interest in photographing political and spiritual leaders, and also traces his practice that evolved at the interstices of his years as a photojournalist.
Press release courtesy Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.