Frames Of The Mind

HIS art is about frozen moments in time, but photographer Raghu Rai’s life knows no pauses. There are professional commitments that have to be met. Creative urges that have to be pursued. Frames that have to be carved out of the ever-shifting tableau that is India. No sooner does Rai put one project to bed than a new one stirs to life. Just out in the market is a book of haunting photographs of Mother Teresa, a combined labour of love with bureaucrat Navin Chawla. On the Rai treadmill are numerous other anthologies, notably one on India’s classical musicians.

So here’s a peep into the workaholic’s engagement diary. First half of February: a trip to Amsterdam to sit on the jury of the annual World Press Photo Contest. Within days of return, inauguration of a retrospective at New Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). An hour later, hop across to Vadehra Art Gallery for an exhibition of Mother Teresa photos. And, of course, before the NGMA event, give finishing touches to a commemorative book, The Land and People I Love .

Rai, visual chronicler of India’s history for over 30 years, shows no signs of slowing down. He’s only changed direction. "During my India Today days, my photos used to be bold, dramatic, powerful," says Rai. "Now my style is quiet, subdued, understated. But once you penetrate the surface, you find a lot happening."

A photographer’s progress. That is what the N G M Aretrospective —  the first-ever devoted to a camera-wielding artist— will encapsulate. On view from February 21 to March 8 will be 190 of Rai’s favourite images, 120 of them black and white, covering three decades from 1966. "It will show diff e rent stages of my work," says Rai. "I am not going to explain anything in words. It should be clear to anybody who understands the visual language," says the 55-year-old man who, with ‘guru’ Kishore Parekh, redrew the contours of Indian photojournalism in the ’60s.

Rai took to photography almost by accident.  His father, Nand Lal, a Partition victim, was an irrigation department employee. The young Raghu had a passion for music, but his father nixed his plans to be a performing artiste. So he took a diploma in civil engineering and ended up in the army— in the Jat Regiment in Ferozepur— as a drawing instructor. "Those were the days when the army was preparing to attack Goa to liberate it from the Portuguese. My job was to enlarge maps of Goa," reminisces Rai.

It was around this time that elder brother S. Paul, then chief photographer of Indian Express , New Delhi, was on a visit home. Raghu wanted to accompany his brother to Delhi. For good. Recalls Paul: "Raghu was in tears, pleading with me to take him along." Thus the strapping, wide-eyed 22-year-old landed in Delhi and under the tutelage of Paul, a master craftsman, quickly learnt the ropes.

It was a little donkey at a friend’s wedding in a village in Uttar Pradesh that gave the aspiring photographer, armed with a camera worth Rs 350, his first professional triumph. As Rai took aim, the frisky, camera-shy animal bolted from the scene. Not one to give up easily, Rai hared off after the fleeing donkey. A hot, tiring chase later, the donkey work paid off. The little creature, frightened and weary, came to a halt. Rai clicked. That was his first lesson in timing. The photograph made it to the cover of the catalogue of the prestigious Pondicherry International Photography Exhibition. Says Rai: "Some of my early pictures were carried by the London Times and the British Journal of Photography annual. So I thought, ‘Oh boy, I can do it!’" He has been doing it ever since. With unprecedented success. First with newspapers like The Hindustan Times ( where Rai worked under Kishore Parekh) and The Statesman, and then with India Today . Rai’s long stint with the fortnightly yielded a series of stunning photoessays. "News photographers in India never had freedom. They were governed by the editors above them," says 80-year- o l d T. Kasinath, president of the India International Photography Council. "Raghu Rai was the first to rebel. That’s perhaps why he left one publication after another. "

Today, apart from generating the prolific output that is required to feed his books, Rai represents Magnum, a photo agency that has offices in Paris, London, New York and Tokyo. His work appears regularly in Time, Life, National Geographic, Paris Match and > Stern. But while glossily-produced, high-priced pictorial books on an amazing range of subjects — Taj Mahal, Tibet, the Sikhs, Khajuraho, Delhi, Calcutta, Mother Teresa— have kept Rai in the news, he has opted out of the grind of daily news photography. "I don’t do daily news picture because they die daily deaths," he says. "I want my photos to live much longer." Hence the new resolve to concentrate on serious work. "I want to work on projects that are related to our national life," says Rai.

Rai feels there are very few good young photographers in the country today. "There is too much mediocrity around. So there is unhealthy competition, constant one-upmanship. It’s an endless rat race," says Rai, who himself has a fair share of critics. He is accused of arrogance, lack of sensitivity to co-workers, self-absorption, favouritism and, worse of all, peddling India to the West. On being asked to comment on Rai’s work, photographer Raghubir Singh said mock-seriously: "Who’s Raghu Rai? Is he a photographer? I don’t much care for his kind of work. So I have no interest in him."

ELDER brother S. Paul feels that Rai is "not very proficient technically, but he has vision". Indeed, it’s his vision that has earned him admirers worldwide. "I’m surprised that anybody should even suggest that Raghu exploits Indian exotica. He has far too much respect for the people he photographs," says Sebastiao Salgado, the legendary Brazilian photographer. Says photographer Sanjeev Saith: "True, working with him means long hours, hard work, exacting standards. But it’s also fun. Rai  as a tremendous sense of history, of the country, of its people."

Rai, the father of four children, two of them with offsprings of their own, has two little daughters, the youngest two years old, from his second wife. It’s not just his ‘personal’ work that matters to him, his personal spaces do as well. He has been busy for two years landscaping his farm near Mehrauli. "The work is absolutely fascinating," he says. "I’m getting birds, plants, stone and other objects to create my own precious space." Clearly, Rai loves his spaces. And not just their physical dimension. "Seeing beyond the physical level and capturing the spirit, the essence of the reality is crucial. Only then can this powerful medium, which documents history and the lives of people for posterity, be meaningful," he says.

The lack of visual literacy in India worries him no end. "I don’t think there is an audience for photography in India. Unknowing and uncaring people just come and go, passing flippant comments," he says. That probably is the reason why he is against photo-exhibitions. The N G M A retrospective is only his second ‘real ’ show, and the first in over 25 years. "Rai shouldn’t blame the viewing public alone," says the owner of Vadehra Art Gallery, Arun Vadehra, whose brainchild the N G M A event is. "If we don’t show them the photographs, how will the audience ever be ready? "

Rai’s pictures and his life have both acquired a degree of repose but he continues to induce extreme reactions. "It is easy to make a lot of noise in India," says Raghubir Singh. "If he is good enough, why doesn’t he exhibit his work abroad?" But Vadehra  is sure that Rai is worth more than any other Indian photographer. "Photographs fetch high prices in the West. There is no reason why the Museum of Modern Art in New York or Tate Gallery in London wouldn’t be interested in buying Rai’s work."

Precisely. A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words. But wouldn’t a thousand words be an awful lot of noise? Quite so. Words are anathema. Rai today deals in silences.