<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/may/Rahul-da-Cunha-op_e.jpg" alt="Rahul da Cunha" width="200" height="69" />&lsquo;A photograph has picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever&rsquo; - <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/mumbai-guide/mumbai-food/article/indian-photographer-raghu-rai-passes-away-peers-curators-gallerists-reveal-what-made-him-different-23628346" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Raghu Rai</a>
&lsquo;Skills are never taught, they are acquired. I can give you a camera, but can&rsquo;t feed your vision. Either you capture the mystery of things or you reveal the mystery&rsquo; - Raghu Rai
Raghu Rai has left us. His legacy will remain etched in black and white. Rai began his seven-decade-long career at a time when resources were scarce, and technology was limited. Analogue shooting was a lottery, film rolls allowed for a maximum of 36 pictures, a zillion little adjustments were required to be made in a second &mdash; the understanding of light, composition choices, framing, the environment, immediate hurdles invading your view &mdash; otherwise you lost your shot.&nbsp;
Rai often said that the great Frenchman, Henri Cartier Bresson, taught him how to look, although he said, &ldquo;The European grammar, subtraction, clean geometry, that crucial isolated decisive moment when you clicked, were no help in Old Delhi. There you see actions within the same frame, voices over voices, a man subject that does not stay main for long.&rdquo;
Raghu Rai was the eye, the ears and the soul of <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/news/opinion/article/mid-day-opinion-is-the-world-unfairly-picking-on-america-the-double-standards-in-judging-global-powers-23622085" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">India</a>. He knew the history, he breathed the politics, he loved the people, he understood the customs, he had the wanderers spirit, moving freely around the country. He once famously said, &ldquo;I like being amongst my own people; I merge with them. I don&rsquo;t wear stylish clothes. I have one camera with a zoom lens so I do not alarm people; no one says &lsquo;here comes the photographer&rsquo;.&rdquo;
Rai knew his country, the size, the disparity, he revelled in the chaos, and how to find control in it &mdash; he strove to find the stillness within himself. He had patience, persistence, and a deep love for politics and leaders, and Prime Ministers and Presidents that led him to Indira Gandhi &mdash; she afforded him an photographic intimacy few lensman were allowed. Rai captured the Emergency, winding his way skilfully through censorship.&nbsp;
Over the years, risking life and limb, he chronicled Operation Blue Star, and the enigma that was Jarnail Singh Bhindrawalle. His career was defined by documenting major conflicts &mdash; he captured the Bangladesh Liberation War, he had the measure of the 1980s Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab. His coverage of Bhopal&rsquo;s Gas Tragedy gained him worldwide recognition. And although Cartier Bresson had already inducted him into the select clique of legendary photographers called Magnum in 1972, he truly hit his stride in the &rsquo;80s.
&ldquo;Please don&rsquo;t forget regimes will come, and regimes will go... but what you leave behind is going to reflect for many long years.&rdquo;
At the core of his practice was an insistence on closeness &mdash; to people, to moments, to truth, he said, &ldquo;They say, if you&rsquo;re not close enough, your photograph is not good enough. <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/mumbai/mumbai-news/article/instant-mid-day-impact-ranwar-village-whiteboard-ban-sparks-debate-over-privacy-heritage-and-public-access-in-bandra-23628478" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Photography </a>is deeply immersive, and your energy has to be concentrated, then your mind body and spirit get into a rhythm and it comes in front of you as you look through your view finder.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Raghu Rai was an old school photographer. At all times his work in the dark room helped us see the light &mdash; they say, one picture is worth a thousand words, he had thousands of pictures that said one word: passion. Well two, passion and compassion. He once said, &ldquo;Democratistion is good, but what are people doing, selfies, self love, making stupid faces- even inside temples and churches people are making faces, it&rsquo;s becoming unbearable.&rdquo;
<a href="https://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/culture/article/legendary-indian-photographer-raghu-rai-passes-away-at-83-marks-end-of-an-era-in-photojournalism-23627550" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Photojournalism</a>, portraiture, political history, Rai had an eye, an eye trained for years to produce a story in the blink of an eye.
Raghu Rai&rsquo;s prints will forever stay imprinted in our souls, his black and whites an endless testimony to the grey matter in his mind, the endless empathy for the unfortunates.
&ldquo;Visual history is more important than making pretty and fine art photography, history is always being written and being re-written, but photo history can never be re-written,&rdquo; he said.
Good night Raghu Rai, and close those eyes that never slept.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, filmmaker and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com

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