Sentimentality colours your understanding of a situation: Raghu Rai
Photographer Raghu Rai
Photographer Raghu Rai
You have photographed several important dignitaries but a lot of your work is also about ordinary life. Can you talk about that?
Eventually, it’s the ordinary daily life that sums up the essence of the everyday. Big events come and go, big guys come and go but daily life continues to be lived. It is where the magic lies. My faith lies in the eyes of the people I photograph. Even the best literature is born out of the ordinary. In Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the old man becomes the sea, he becomes the boat, the waves, and how he narrates those emotions takes you closer to his journey into the sea. It is the same in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, Apur Sansar…
Your first photograph was of a baby donkey, taken during a visit to a village with a friend in the early 1960s. Your brother S Paul was already a well-known photographer at the time. What prompted you to pick up the camera?
After completing my civil engineering, I did a government job for a year, and for another year I worked with the army as a drawing instructor, preparing enlarged maps of Goa as part of preparations for the liberation of Goa from the Portuguese. After the two years, I took a break and came to live with my brother in Delhi, where I was introduced to different aspects of photography through discussions between him and his friends. One day, I was accompanying a friend to a village in Haryana and asked my brother for a camera. Some children playing with a baby donkey caught my eye. I started chasing the donkey to amuse the children and we ran for a while and then the donkey stopped; at that moment I took a straight shot. When I returned, my brother got the film processed and told me ‘kamal kar diya’. He sent it to The Times in London, where it was carried as a half page and I won prize money that was enough to cover my expenses for a month. Since I wasn’t doing anything at the time, I asked my brother for a camera. He gave me one film a day and I would photograph on the streets. Soon, I joined a newspaper.
You have previously mentioned how you try to remain emotionally detached from your subject. How achievable is that in situations like the Bhopal gas tragedy or the 1971 Bangladesh War; your family too moved to India from Pakistan during the Partition.
If you get attached to things emotionally, sentimentality doesn’t let you see things clearly, it colours your understanding of a situation, and then you cannot reflect the truth as it reveals itself. When I was becoming a professional, I would take many photographs and study them. I discovered that the best photographs were those where I was following my instinct. When I was trying very hard, it became predictable, and in photography, creativity is the first principle. So more than a professional photographer, I became an explorer of life.
When you take photographs, are you also cognizant to the fact that you are perhaps documenting history?
If responsible journalism is the first draft of history, then photojournalism is the first evidence of that history being lived. The sanctity of my profession requires that the photographs go into the depths of daily life of people’s emotions and their responses to situations and capture that in any given time or space. I am not here to make pretty pictures or documentary pictures that just impart information. For instance, at the time of Partition, there were so many photographers but most were taking snapshots of events, situations and people. In contrast, look at some of Henri Cartier Bresson’s photographs, including the iconic shot of Jawaharlal Nehru talking to Edwina Mountbatten as Lord Mountbatten looks in a different direction. It shows their closeness and the moment doesn’t need any explanation. It is the same for Bresson’s photograph of Gandhi’s death, and Margaret Bourke-White’s photographs of the Partition refugees and their suffering.
Rai shares his experiences and stories behind some of his iconic photographs selected by Roobina Karode, Director and Chief Curator at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) from the exhibition “Raghu Rai: A Thousand Lives — Photographs from 1965-2005” that is on till May 15
Dalai Lama
His Holiness the Dala Lama against the Himalayasi, Dharamsala, 1988 (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
His Holiness the Dala Lama against the Himalayasi, Dharamsala, 1988 (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
I first photographed His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1976 at the Kalachakra (Buddhist initiation ceremony) in Ladakh. At first, I photographed him from a distance. On the last day, Tavleen Singh and I had an appointment for an interview with him and that’s when we were introduced. He received me with the compassion and love that he bestows on everyone he meets. Despite his position, he makes you feel like an equal.
I have subsequently photographed him several times, and on each visit he extends his hand, I kiss his hand, he pulls me in, and my head goes on his shoulder, his head comes on mine, and he holds me tight for a prolonged period, giving me that energy.
He opened his world to me, from the garden where grows the most beautiful flowers to observing him treat his sick kitten with Tibetan herbal medicine or watching him fix a television. During one of my trips to Dharamshala, he gifted me a white stone from his altar. Since my camera is most precious to me, I kept it in my camera bag. Years later, I was feeling very uneasy and started wearing the stone around my neck. Later, a Tibetan doctor told me that my heart was in trouble and it was the stone that was perhaps protecting me. I went to a doctor with my wife and we discovered that I had 90 percent blockage in my heart. I had an open heart surgery after which we went to the Dalai Lama to thank him. When I told him that his stone had saved my life, he laughed and said, “I don’t think I can do these things”.
When he says, “You are my friend”, he treats you like one and gives you the same respect that a friend should be given.
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi in her dinning room, Delhi 1971 (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
Indira Gandhi in her dinning room, Delhi 1971 (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
Unlike now, when photographers are at a distance of 50 feet from politicians, access to ministers was easier earlier and we would stand no more than five-six feet away. Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister for over a decade, and I photographed her in different situations and circumstances, from political to social and cultural events, and also her home. I recall having the best litchi juice at her house. She was strong-minded and powerful, and genuinely appreciated art, heritage and culture.
After the liberation of Bangladesh, she was meeting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Shimla and I asked for an appointment with her. I wanted to capture her against the mighty Himalayas that she loved. We took some pictures as she walked in a garden but I wasn’t very happy. We reached a spot where the Himalayan range was visible, but there was a parapet blocking the view. She was very perceptive and asked me what was wrong. When I told her I wasn’t getting the picture I had visualised and if she could climb the parapet, at first she looked angry but then a chair was called for and she climbed up and I got the shot I wanted. She was very gracious and appreciated those whom she knew were hard working.
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa at her home, 1970s (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
Mother Teresa at her home, 1970s (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
She was like a spiritual teacher to me and I kept going back to her. I first met her in the early ’70s through (writer and artist) Desmond Doig. He took me to her office, which was extremely modest. As they were talking, I kept clicking photographs. Mother wasn’t very fond of taking pictures, so she gently asked, “How many more photographs will you click?” She seemed satisfied with my response, when I asked, “Mother, how many more times will you pray? This is my way of praying and discovering life.”
She had dedicated her life in the name of God and when trying to capture such a powerful person, you need to try to capture the energy in the form of feelings. She was a mother to everybody, who truly believed in compassion and seva.
Old Delhi photograph
Evening prayer, Jama Masjid, Delhi 1982 (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
Evening prayer, Jama Masjid, Delhi 1982 (Credit: Raghu Rai & PHOTOINK)
Photography for me is a darshan of my country and this image was taken when I was working on my book about Old Delhi and used to regularly visit the area. A friend of mine took me to this spot from where we could see the whole city — with the modern buildings, Jama Masjid, Red Fort, people on their rooftops and a young woman doing namaz in her house. It was such a fascinating panorama. I have photographed so many monuments and my attempt has always been to capture the larger context and the life being lived around them.
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