When one speaks of India and photography, the sentence feels incomplete without taking Raghu Rai’s name. His work became emblematic to the medium, not merely because he recorded India, but because he revealed it — with patience, poetry and an instinctive sense of order.
In the years that he was active, from the mid-1960s to the time of his passing, he captured on camera, an India, the way he saw it: from its leaders and labourers, musicians and mourners, to its monuments and markets. Like all great photojournalists, he captured situations as they unfolded, yet he brought to them a symmetry that was unmistakably his own. The blacks in his black-and-whites worked hard, and were not happenstance, they were statements.
There was endless patience in his eye. In Pt. S. Balachander’s open fingers receiving the veena that is set off against cotton-white clouds in Mahabalipuram, in Mother Teresa’s quiet piety among the diseased and deprived in Kolkata, in Indira Gandhi’s stately presence with her Council of Ministers in 1967, Rai found not just faces, but destinies.
Be it the devastating Bhopal gas leak, the sur and taan of Kishori Amonkar, or the Indian soldiers tending to a wounded Pakistani counterpart unsure of his fate, Rai transcended the medium. His Taj Mahal series remains among the most luminous tributes to the monument.
A Padma Shri awardee, Raghu Rai inspired generations of photojournalists and countless others to see India anew. His masterclass ended on April 26, 2026, but his images will continue the conversation.
Photo:
Murali Kumar K
Raghu Rai (1942-2026)
Photo:
Raghu Rai
Hustle and bustle: Traffic at Chawri Bazaar, Delhi in 1965. Horse-drawn carriages and workers manning handcarts crowd the streets.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
Formidable power: Congressmen look on as Indira Gandhi, India’s first woman Prime Minister, reviews documents at her office in 1967.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
The other side of war: A wounded soldier from the Pakistan Army found on Indian territory being taken for treatment in 1971.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
Blinded by gas: Victims of the Bhopal disaster in 1984. The chemical leak killed thousands and left the survivors with lifelong physical and neurological disabilities.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
At her peak: Indira Gandhi photographed against the Himalayas in 1972.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
Tender bond: Mother Teresa holds a child in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in 1979.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
Reverent embrace: Veena maestro
S. Balachander unites with his instrument in the historic town of Mahabalipuram
in 1988.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
Fresh angle: A view of the Taj Mahal, 1977. Rai’s photo series is considered one of the greatest tributes to the monument.
Photo:
Raghu Rai
Classical tunes: Vocalist Kishori Amonkar during a concert in Mumbai in 1988.
Published – May 17, 2026 07:57 am IST
