The man who photographed India’s soul: Legendary photojournalist Raghu Rai dies at 83
One of the most prolific visual chroniclers of contemporary India, he instilled life into every photograph that he took
Raghu Rai’s foray into photography was rather serendipitous. A civil engineer who was on a professional break, it was during a visit to his brother, photographer S Paul, in Delhi in the 1960s that Rai was introduced to the nuances of the medium. Accompanying a friend to a village in Haryana, he took what was among his first photographs: a donkey gazing straight into the camera. Impressed by the image, Paul sent it to The Times in London, where it was published, earning Rai not just prize money but also more significantly a career in photography that was to stay with him until he died in Delhi on April 26. He was 83.
Tenacious, observant and deeply curious, Rai instilled life into every photograph that he took and captured the pulse of the nation. “More than a professional photographer, I became an explorer of life,” he had stated in an interview to The Indian Express in 2024. Though that life has now ended, the moments he recorded will remain forever in the form of his rich archive that spans from photojournalism to documentation and portraits of some of the most recognised figures from across different fields, politics to culture.
One of India’s foremost photographers, Rai was also a photojournalist for over five decades. He carried his intuitive spirit to the different newsrooms that he was part of. In the 2024 interview, he noted, “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.”
So across seven decades, the 1972 Padma Shri awardee covered a spectrum of the country’s history, including photographs of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in Amritsar’s Golden Temple complex shortly before Operation Blue Star in 1984. Some of his most enduring images also came from the site of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and that of refugees during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. A photojournalist during the Emergency, he found aways to work around the censorship. Recalling those years, in a 2025 interview to The Indian Express he stated, “There were several photographs that couldn’t be published, including that of political leaders who were arrested and protesters. We devised ways to depict reality, with symbolic representations.”
In 1977, he also became the country’s first photographer to be invited to join Magnum Photos upon the nomination by legendary French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who had seen his photographs at a Paris exhibition in 1971. The latter’s humanist approach echoed in Rai’s own practice, from his frames of the bustling streets of Old Delhi to the ghats of Ganga, landscapes across terrains and the Mahakumbh.
Also testament to his inclination to introspect and archive are his several books, including Delhi, Raghu Rai’s India, Picturing Time and Tibet in Exile. Raghu Rai: People (2016), on the other hand, brought together his finest portraits, from the anonymous to the well-recognised, including former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan, Dalai Lama, Roman Catholic nun Mother Teresa and film personalities Satyajit Ray and Aparna Sen.
Even in his later years, Rai continued to photograph with the same devotion that marked his foray onto becoming one of the most prolific visual chroniclers of contemporary India.
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Raghu Rai’s foray into photography was rather serendipitous. A civil engineer who was on a professional break, it was during a visit to his brother, photographer S Paul, in Delhi in the 1960s that Rai was introduced to the nuances of the medium. Accompanying a friend to a village in Haryana, he took what was among his first photographs: a donkey gazing straight into the camera. Impressed by the image, Paul sent it to The Times in London, where it was published, earning Rai not just prize money but also more significantly a career in photography that was to stay with him until he died in Delhi on April 26. He was 83.
Tenacious, observant and deeply curious, Rai instilled life into every photograph that he took and captured the pulse of the nation. “More than a professional photographer, I became an explorer of life,” he had stated in an interview to The Indian Express in 2024. Though that life has now ended, the moments he recorded will remain forever in the form of his rich archive that spans from photojournalism to documentation and portraits of some of the most recognised figures from across different fields, politics to culture.
One of India’s foremost photographers, Rai was also a photojournalist for over five decades. He carried his intuitive spirit to the different newsrooms that he was part of. In the 2024 interview, he noted, “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.”
So across seven decades, the 1972 Padma Shri awardee covered a spectrum of the country’s history, including photographs of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in Amritsar’s Golden Temple complex shortly before Operation Blue Star in 1984. Some of his most enduring images also came from the site of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and that of refugees during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. A photojournalist during the Emergency, he found aways to work around the censorship. Recalling those years, in a 2025 interview to The Indian Express he stated, “There were several photographs that couldn’t be published, including that of political leaders who were arrested and protesters. We devised ways to depict reality, with symbolic representations.”
In 1977, he also became the country’s first photographer to be invited to join Magnum Photos upon the nomination by legendary French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who had seen his photographs at a Paris exhibition in 1971. The latter’s humanist approach echoed in Rai’s own practice, from his frames of the bustling streets of Old Delhi to the ghats of Ganga, landscapes across terrains and the Mahakumbh.
Also testament to his inclination to introspect and archive are his several books, including Delhi, Raghu Rai’s India, Picturing Time and Tibet in Exile. Raghu Rai: People (2016), on the other hand, brought together his finest portraits, from the anonymous to the well-recognised, including former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan, Dalai Lama, Roman Catholic nun Mother Teresa and film personalities Satyajit Ray and Aparna Sen.
Even in his later years, Rai continued to photograph with the same devotion that marked his foray onto becoming one of the most prolific visual chroniclers of contemporary India.
