Raghu Rai: The lens that captured India’s soul for over six decades

From war to worship, Raghu Rai’s photographs shaped how India sees itself.

India’s visual memory of the last 60 years, from the power corridors in
Delhi, to the dust and smoke in Bhopal, is impossible to imagine without Raghu Rai. His photographs turned news into history and everyday life into something unforgettable.

Born in 1942 in Jhang in undivided Punjab, his path into photography was accidental. He was trained as a civil engineer, but a single picture of a donkey he had clicked got published in The Times in London, pushing him toward the camera instead. His older brother, the photographer S Paul, had planted the seed, guiding him to look at ordinary streets with patience.

He joined The Statesman in 1966, and Henri Cartier‑Bresson later nominated him to Magnum Photos in 1977, making Rai the first
Indian to enter the legendary cooperative. 

India through his lens

Rai’s career unfolded in parallel with India’s turbulent decades. He covered the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, the Emergency, the Bhopal gas tragedy, unrest in Kashmir and countless elections, protests and pilgrimages. His pictures are full of layers, people, animals, walls, smoke, sky and emotions all held together in a single frame that somehow never feels crowded.

Raghu Rai’s photograph, ‘Burial of an Unknown Child’, had a deep impact; the image came to define the tragedy itself and became an enduring hallmark of his work, having a lasting effect globally in street demonstrations and justice campaigns on behalf of the victims. 

From Raghu Rai’s Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta to books on the Taj Mahal, the Sikhs, Tibet in exile and Indian classical music, each body of work felt like a carefully curated exposure.

In Hampi, his book Vijayanagara Empire: Ruins to Resurrection turns boulders, temples and scattered carvings into a living stage where light and shadow play across stones. He revisited the site to deepen the project; it was a landscape where his compositions themselves became a form of excavation.

Icons and ordinary people

Rai became equally known for his portraits as for his street work. He photographed Indira Gandhi across her political life, producing some of the most reproduced frames of any Indian prime minister. He made celebrated books on Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama and captured famous personalities such as M S Subbulakshmi, Bismillah Khan, and Bhimsen Joshi mid‑performance. 

His portraits of writers and actors, including Girish Karnad and R K Laxman, sit alongside labourers and children in city lanes, underlining his belief that the same intensity must run through every frame.

“When I take a person’s portrait, I am trying to capture the aura of that person,” he once wrote, insisting he wants “the truth of that person to emerge in the photographs.”

Through Magnum, Rai’s India travelled far beyond its borders. His photo essays appeared in leading international magazines, and he was commissioned by National Geographic.

Within Magnum and world photo circles, he helped prove that Indian photojournalism could carry the same weight as any global work.

He also served on the juries of World Press Photo and UNESCO’s international photo contest, and his path helped open the way for Sohrab Hura, who later became only the second Indian to join Magnum.

Rai worked alongside the legendary Sebastiao Salgado and Graciela Iturbide on India–Mexico projects, and writers on photography note that Steve McCurry counts Cartier‑Bresson and Rai among those who shaped his way of seeing, a sign of how far Rai’s influence travelled.

Impossible to copy

Rai’s style is rooted in patient observation. He used prime and wide‑angle lenses to hold several moments in a single frame, shifted to tight close‑ups when a face carried the whole story and worked at short shooting distances instead of hiding behind long telephoto glass. His frames look so simple that it feels like anyone can take that image, but the timing, tonality and balance of foreground and background make them almost impossible to copy.

Most of his renowned work was made on film in black and white. He often spoke of the romance of the analogue era. In one interview, he said photography is his profession, his religion, his karma, “it is my life.” There is an ocean of his work, and he spent years digitising and organising his negatives into categories. 

Family and later years

His son Nitin is a photographer, his daughter Avani directed the documentary, ‘Raghu Rai, An Unframed Portrait’, and his second daughter Purvai runs a photography magazine. Exhibitions in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo and Sydney carried his India abroad even as he continued to travel on assignments across Europe, America and Southeast Asia. His influence is visible in young Indian photographers who document social issues and street life, composing frames with empathy.

Among his many honours are the Padma Shri in 1971 and the inaugural Académie des Beaux‑Arts Photography Award-William Klein in 2019, recognising a lifetime of work.

Raghu Rai once said that if a photograph captures the depth of an experience with honesty, “then the camera has served its purpose.” His pictures of refugees, gas victims, musicians and street vendors do exactly that. As a photographer myself, it is hard to keep a narrative distance when writing about him, but the truth is simple: he truly inspired me.

The author is a photojournalist with this publication.

(For more pics, browse through raghuraifoundation.org)