Photographer Raghu Rai dies after prolonged illness

Renowned Indian photographer Raghu Rai died at 83 in New Delhi after battling cancer. Known for documenting India’s socio-political landscape, he captured historic events and iconic personalities, leaving behind an extraordinary visual legacy spanning over six decades

New Delhi: Raghu Rai, one of India’s best-known photographers whose lens captured India in its many shades, died 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.

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He is survived by wife Gurmeet, son Nitin and daughters Lagan, Avani and Purvai.

The last rites will be performed at Lodhi Crematorium at 4 pm on Sunday.

Born on December 18, 1942, in Jhang, Punjab (now in Pakistan), Rai was qualified as a civil engineer and only took up photography at 23 before joining The Statesman newspaper as its chief photographer in 1966.

The life from that point onwards is anything but a blur of memories, as the next six decades of Rai’s career remain testament to all that unfolded in India’s socio-political landscape.

The prolific photographer, a protege of Henri Cartier-Bresson, captured some of the most poignant events in Indian modern history, including the Bangladesh refugee crisis of 1972 and the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984.

He captured India’s social, political and spiritual shades in his portraits of leading figures, including Indira Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Satyajit Ray, Hariprasad Chaurasia and Bismillah Khan, which offered a hitherto unknown perspective 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 illustrative career, Rai worked with leading Indian magazines Sunday and India Today. Over the years, his photo essays appeared in renowned international publications, including Time, Life, The New York Times, The Independent, and The New Yorker.

He has served three times on the jury of the World Press Photo and twice on the jury of UNESCO’s International Photo Contest, according to Magnum Photos, where he was nominated to join by Cartier-Bresson in 1977.

Rai received the Padma Shri in 1972 for his coverage of the Bangladesh war and its aftermath, apart from several national and international awards.

He 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 website of the Raghu Rai Foundation, which was established in 2010 and has archived more than 50,000 images by Rai, he was working on his 57th book.