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Raghu Rai, The Photographer Who Framed India's Soul, Dies at 83
PeopleAuthored by: Simran SukhnaniUpdated Apr 26, 2026, 09:39 ISTThe Father of Indian Photography, Raghu Rai, dies at 83, a man whose camera bore witness to India's defining moments, from Bhopal's buried children to the corridors of power.Raghu Rai Dies At 83 (Credits: Instagram)On the morning of April 26, 2026, India lost the man who had spent more than half a century making sure it would never forget itself. Raghu Rai, photographer, photojournalist, witness, died at a private hospital in Delhi after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 83.He was not supposed to be a photographer. Born in 1942 in Jhang, in what is now Pakistan, his father wanted him to be a civil engineer, while he wanted to be a musician. Photography arrived sideways, through his elder brother S. Paul, who handed him a camera in the early 1960s. By 1965, Rai had joined The Statesman in New Delhi as its chief photographer. He was in his early twenties. He would spend the rest of his life proving he had found the one thing he was always meant to do.Pictures by Raghu Rai (Credits: Instagram)Raghu Rai And Magnum PhotosHis talent was impossible to ignore. In 1971, he exhibited his work in Paris. Among those who saw it was Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French master who co-founded Magnum Photos, the most prestigious photographic cooperative in the world. Cartier-Bresson was not easily impressed. Six years later, he personally nominated Rai to join Magnum, making him the first Indian photographer ever invited into that institution. It remains one of the rarest honors in the history of photography.Rai's signature was silence. He shot primarily in black and white, believing colour could distract from the subject. He moved through the world in a state of readiness, waiting for life to reveal itself, spontaneous, honest, sometimes almost uncomfortably intimate. When he first met Mother Teresa and clicked frame after frame, she asked him how many more times he would click. He replied: "Mother, how many more times will you pray? This is my way of praying and discovering life." He spent four decades photographing her.Bhopal Gas Tragedy (Credits: Magnumphotos.com)Raghu Rai And Bhopal Gas Tragedy But it was Bhopal that defined his moral purpose. On the night of December 2, 1984, toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant and killed thousands while the city slept. Rai was on the first morning flight. At a burial site, he photographed a man lowering a small child into the ground, the man's hands tender ...
Renowned photographer Raghu Rai dies at 83 Renowned photographer Raghu ...
4 min readUpdated: Apr 26, 2026 09:37 AM IST 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.” In 1977, Raghu Rai became the country’s first photographer to be invited to join Magnum Photos upon the nomination by legendary French photographer Henri Cartier-BressonSo 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...
Legendary Indian photographer Raghu Rai passes away at 83
4 hours ago ... India has lost one of its most influential visual storytellers, as legendary photographer Raghu Rai passed away on Sunday, at the age of 83, marking t.
Legendary Indian photographer Raghu Rai passes away at 83
Legendary photographer Raghu Rai dies at 83 in Delhi after battling cancer. Known for capturing India's soul, his last rites will be held today.
