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ShareRaghu Rai's photographs tell many stories, of people, of places and of lives. He speaks to Ramya Sarma about some special moments he has captured over the years
His images are almost iconic, framing fragments of history that he has watched over 40 years, with his philosophy of "I am always loyal to the situations as I face them". He has focussed on people (Mother Theresa and Indira Gandhi, for instance), on communities (the Sikhs), customs, the dynamics of daily life, even as he has turned his lens on significant events, breaking news with a single photograph that said far more than pages of reportage.
Many of these pictures and many others not seen before in public will be on display at Mumbai's National Gallery of Modern Art, in a retrospective show called The Journey of a Moment: Raghu Rai.
Rai explains that "Most of my work these days is panoramic; each picture has lots of smaller pictures in it." It is part of his personal and professional evolution, since, as he feels, "There comes a saturation time in any art form." Transcending this passage of time and skill, he has made his own history. "India is a multireligious, multicultural society with so many sanctuaries. People have learned to live together. To capture that experience, the picture must have many moments in it; one moment is not enough for
me. And one picture, one image, is no longer 'all', enough." Rai's new work "is about this philosophy. India needs a more complexresponse than just a moment in space.
Multiplicity of image is what mattersto me today."
