Visual stories carry the weight of history and are our safety net against the fallibility of memory. Raghu Rai’s camera has been at the frontline of the most exceptional and the most quotidian of moments. Street life dominates the black and white images of his stunning ongoing show A Thousand Lives at the Kiran Nadar Museum in Delhi and offers a visual journey through his analog work from 1965-2005.
In their introductory essay, the curators of the show Roobina Karode and Devika Daulet-Singh write, “This exhibition focuses on the pre-digital phase of Rai’s career, when he used analog/ film photography, exploring it with unprecedented fervour, freedom and imagination. From his inexhaustible archives of photographs that defy being contained easily within any of his exhibitions, a fresh slice has been pulled out which brings many extraordinary photographs into the public domain for the first time.”
A section of the exhibition has a selection of Rai’s photo-essay on Jayaprakash Narayan and the volatile 1974 Bihar student movement. It documents some of the most defining moments of its tumultuous history. Rai’s reportage involved keeping his camera trained on Narayan and his followers and getting as close to the action as possible.
He visited Patna, a riverside city spread across twelve…
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