Iconic Indian photographer Raghu Rai dies at 83, look at his rich visual legacy

Photography in the 1960s was an altogether different game. Raghu Rai, 83, who passed away on Sunday at a Delhi hospital after battling cancer, was a legend who transformed the profession at a time when there were very few photojournalists in India.

He was a man always on the lookout for interesting happenings, who could take pictures of towering personalities, ordinary humans, animals, birds and challenging events and transform photojournalism in the country. Rai is survived by his wife Gurmeet, son Nitin and daughters Lagan, Avani and Purvai.

Some of the photographer’s memorable images came from hotspots across India: the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984, Operation Blue Star (also in the same year), of refugees during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, pictures during the Emergency (1975-77), and legendary photographs of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. Raghu was the first photojournalist to win the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, in 1972.

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One of his photographs, the ‘Burial of an unknown child’ showed a father silently burying his son in the Madhya Pradesh capital after the Union Carbide disaster. He returned to Bhopal over the years, taking photographs of the thousands of survivors, their faces disfigured, their bodies scarred for life, even of several skulls (in Sacks full of Skulls, 2001).

Raghu also took pictures across different Indian cities. About two years ago, he held an exhibition of 300 of his pictures at ‘Raghu Rai: A Thousand Lives—Photographs from 1965-2005’ at a Delhi art gallery.

Born in a village in Punjab (now part of Pakistan) in 1942, he got into photography and soon carved a name for himself. He caught the attention of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French humanist photographer, who mastered candid and street photography. Raghu was nominated by Henri to Magnum Photos in 1977.

But Raghu has been critical of the way millions of people now take to photography by taking selfies all over the country. “Democratisation is good, but what are these people doing?” he wondered in a recent interview. “Selfies, self-love…it’s becoming unbearable now.”

Here are some of his precious photographs: