12/08/2013
RAGHU RAI (b.1942) originally trained as a civil engineer, before taking up photography at the age of 23, in 1965. Raghu Rai has deliberately remained focussed on the universality of Indian life and its many cultures. His work has become known world wide both through exhibitions, book publications and through major international magazine photo-essays. This exhibition has been selected from his wide-ranging photographic oeuvre, to focus on his work in the photography of the street and other public spaces. He has written ‘I like being amongst my own people; I merge with them; I don’t wear stylish clothes; I have one camera with zoom lens so I do not alarm people; no-one says ‘Here comes the photographer’’. Immersing himself in the life of ordinary, anonymous people to record the minutiae of their lived experience, he pays homage to the ever-changing diversity of life in the subcontinent.