Raghu Rai: The Eye of India
by Jerome D.
Introduction
Raghu Rai (18 December 1942 – 26 April 2026) was an Indian photographer and photojournalist widely regarded as the greatest chronicler of independent India — and, by many accounts, the finest photographer his country has ever produced.
Born in the village of Jhang in Punjab, British India (now Pakistan), he trained as a civil engineer before discovering photography through his elder brother, the photographer S. Paul. His first published image — a donkey staring straight into the lens — appeared in The Times of London. He joined The Statesman newspaper in New Delhi as chief photographer in 1966 and never looked back.
In 1971, the legendary Henri Cartier-Bresson, impressed by an exhibition of Rai's work at Galerie Delpire in Paris, nominated him to join Magnum Photos — making Rai the first and, for decades, the only Indian member of the world's most prestigious photography cooperative. He formally joined in 1977.
Over a career spanning six decades, Rai documented the defining moments of modern Indian history with incomparable intimacy and authority: the Bangladesh independence war of 1971, the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the life of Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama in exile, and the daily texture of Indian life in all its complexity and colour.
He served three times on the jury of the World Press Photo contest and twice on the jury of UNESCO's International Photo Contest. His awards include the Padma Shri (1972), the Photographer of the Year award in the United States (1992, for a National Geographic cover story), and the Officier des Arts et des Lettres conferred by the French government in 2009. He produced more than 57 books.
He passed away on 26 April 2026 in New Delhi, aged 83. At his funeral at Lodhi Cremation Ground, his family placed on his chest a Nikon Z8 fitted with a Z 24-200mm zoom lens, and beside it a small box of expired Kodak ColorPlus 200 film — dated May 2017. No eulogy could have been more eloquent.
As he once said: "I can never be true to my experiences without a camera."
Camera Gear Used by Raghu Rai
Early Film Career
Rai began his career shooting on analogue film cameras, working through Canon and Nikon SLR systems across the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s — the standard professional tools of the photojournalist era. For much of his film career he carried two camera bodies simultaneously: one loaded with colour film, one with black-and-white, allowing him to switch between registers without missing a moment.
His early film work — including the Bangladesh coverage, the Bhopal documentation, and his portraits of Mother Teresa — was produced on this dual-body setup, a common practice among documentary photographers working before digital made the choice between colour and monochrome a post-processing decision.
The Digital Transition: Nikon D100
In 2003, on an assignment for Geo Magazine in Mumbai, Rai made the switch to digital with a Nikon D100 — and never returned to film for professional work. His own words on the moment are unambiguous: "From that moment to today, I haven't been able to go back to using film."
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| Nikon D100 |
The Nikon D800 and D850
In the years following his transition to digital, Rai consolidated his kit around the Nikon D800 — a camera he confirmed explicitly in multiple interviews. "I use my digital cameras… D800, D7200," he stated in one documented interview, adding that he had reached a point where he used only two or three zoom lenses, choosing his focal length based on the specific space he wanted to capture.
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| Nikon D800 |
The D800's 36-megapixel full-frame sensor gave him files of exceptional quality for large-format reproduction in his books and exhibitions. He also used the Nikon D850 in his later career — a 45-megapixel body that extended the resolution advantage while maintaining the handling familiarity of the Nikon DSLR system he had used for decades.
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| Nikon D850 |
The Nikon Z8 — His Final Camera
In his last active years, Rai had moved to the Nikon Z8 mirrorless system — confirmed definitively and movingly by the camera placed on his chest at his funeral. The Z8, fitted with a Nikkor Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR zoom, was not a symbolic prop but his actual working camera: a current, high-end professional mirrorless body capable of 20 frames per second, advanced autofocus, and the full flexibility of the Z-mount lens system.
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| Nikon Z8 check price on Amazon |
The choice of a zoom lens for his final kit is consistent with everything Rai said about his working philosophy across decades: "I try to minimise the use of my equipment so that I am not wasting time in choosing my equipment or lens. The range of zoom lenses available, especially with Nikon that I have used all my life, is amazing. And maybe with just one zoom lens you can cover a lot."
Lenses
Zoom lenses — lifelong preference. Across both his film and digital careers, Rai consistently favoured zoom lenses over primes. His reasoning was practical and deliberate: zoom lenses allowed him to decide on the exact focal length that captured "the space he had in mind" for each image without changing lenses or wasting time. He cited the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR as a lens capable of covering wide-angle interiors, street work, and even wildlife in a single walk — the kind of versatility that suited his responsive, intuitive working method.
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| Nikon 28-300mm check price on Amazon |
His final confirmed lens, the Nikkor Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR, was a direct expression of this philosophy carried into his mirrorless years: a single, compact zoom covering an enormous focal range with stabilisation for handheld shooting in the variable light of Indian streets.
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| Nikkor Z 24-200mm check price on Amazon |
Film
For the first four decades of his career, Rai worked primarily in black-and-white film, which he regarded as the medium closest to emotional truth — less exaggerated than colour, more concentrated on light, form, and feeling. He also produced extensive colour work, particularly for magazine assignments, but his most celebrated images — the Bhopal documentation, the Bangladesh coverage, the Mother Teresa portraits — are predominantly monochrome.
The Kodak ColorPlus 200 film placed beside him at his funeral — expired, dated 2017 — was a poignant acknowledgment of where he came from and what film had meant to him, even as he had spent his last two decades working entirely in digital.
Technique & Style
Raghu Rai's photography is defined by emotional directness, physical proximity, and a total commitment to India as subject. Where many photographers of his generation built careers by travelling globally, Rai made a conscious decision to dedicate his entire practice to his own country — a choice that gave his work a depth and specificity that no amount of travel could have produced.
He worked intuitively and instinctively, distrusting premeditation. "The thought process has to be stopped," he said of street photography. "The mind has to be at ease otherwise this heavyweight champion sitting inside you keeps programming you… creativity happens beyond that thought process." His approach was to be fully present in a scene and respond to it, trusting the accumulated experience of decades of looking to produce the right frame.
His compositions are characterised by strong geometric structure, close physical engagement with subjects, and a willingness to include the uncomfortable and the painful alongside the beautiful and the tender. The Bhopal images — made in the immediate aftermath of the disaster and in its long, toxic aftermath — are among the most important documentary photographs of the twentieth century, combining journalistic rigour with genuine grief.
He was equally comfortable with intimate portraiture — his sustained access to Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and generations of Indian political figures produced images of rare psychological depth — and with the anonymous, observational work of street photography.
His preference for zoom lenses over primes reflects a philosophy of visual thinking: he conceived each image in terms of the spatial relationship he wanted, then found the focal length that matched it, rather than adapting his vision to a fixed lens.
How to Imitate His Style in Post-Processing
Rai's aesthetic spans decades and formats, but his most celebrated work shares a consistent tonal character — rich, high-contrast monochrome with strong separation between light and shadow, and a direct, unembellished quality that never mistakes technique for meaning. Pixlr is an excellent tool for approaching this aesthetic:
Convert to black and white with channel mixing.
Rai's monochrome is not achieved by simple desaturation. Use Pixlr's Black & White conversion with channel mixing — boosting the red and yellow channels slightly lifts skin tones and gives warm-toned Indian light scenes the tonal separation that made his portraits so readable.
Increase midtone contrast.
His prints have presence and weight — a density in the midtones that gives them gravity. Use Pixlr's Curves tool to deepen the midtones slightly without crushing the shadows. The goal is richness, not drama.
Preserve shadow detail.
Despite his strong contrast, Rai's images rarely lose information in the shadows entirely. Keep a slight lift in the darkest tones — shadows should feel dense and present, not absent.
Leave the image alone.
Rai's approach to editing was minimal and honest. "The magic of instinctive response is very precious," he said. The edit should serve the image, not transform it. Heavy filtering and stylisation are the opposite of everything his work represents.
How to Shoot Like Raghu Rai
Know your subject over decades, not days.
Rai spent sixty years photographing India. The depth of his work is inseparable from that duration. Choose a place, a community, or a theme that you can commit to long-term — and return to it year after year.
Stop thinking and start seeing.
Rai was explicit that creativity happens beyond the thought process. In the field, trust your instincts rather than your plans. The deliberate decisions happen in the edit, not on the street.
Work close and with empathy.
His portraits — of Teresa, of the Dalai Lama, of Bhopal survivors, of anonymous street figures — all share a quality of genuine relationship. The camera records what the photographer feels about the subject. Work on the relationship first.
Carry one zoom and move.
Rai's preference for a single zoom lens was a tool for staying mobile and responsive. Rather than stopping to change lenses, he changed position — moving closer, moving wider, finding the framing through his feet as much as through optics.
Shoot both colour and monochrome.
Rai's career in the digital era involved shooting in colour and converting to black-and-white when the image demanded it. Shoot in RAW, assess each image on its own terms, and decide in post which palette serves the emotional content.
Attach meaning to every frame.
The expired Kodak film at his funeral was a reminder that for Rai, photography was never casual. Every frame was a commitment. Slow down your shooting and ask whether each image earns its place.
Legacy
Raghu Rai's death on 26 April 2026 closes one of the longest and most significant chapters in the history of Indian photography — and in the wider history of documentary photography globally.
He was, as Henri Cartier-Bresson recognised fifty years ago, a photographer of exceptional gifts: technically versatile, emotionally courageous, and possessed of an inexhaustible curiosity about his own country. His coverage of the Bhopal gas disaster — pursued not just at the moment of the catastrophe but for twenty years afterwards, tracking the survivors and the ongoing contamination — is one of the great sustained documentary projects in the medium's history.
As the only Indian member of Magnum Photos for much of his career, he carried an institutional weight that he wore lightly, continuing to work with the same direct, instinctive approach whether shooting for Time and National Geographic or wandering the streets of Delhi with a single camera and zoom.
He produced more than 57 books. His images appeared in Time, Life, GEO, The New York Times, Newsweek, Vogue, and The New Yorker. His exhibitions were held in London, Paris, New York, Hamburg, Prague, Tokyo, Zurich, and Sydney. He served on the jury of World Press Photo three times.
None of these facts fully captures the weight of what he did. He photographed India — all of it, over six decades — with honesty, love, and an eye that was, in the truest sense, irreplaceable.
Selected Books by Raghu Rai
Raghu Rai's India: Reflections in Colour — One of his landmark collections, showcasing his colour work across the subcontinent.
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| see it on Amazon |
Raghu Rai's Delhi — A sustained portrait of the Indian capital across decades.
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| see it on Amazon |
Mother Teresa: A Life of Dedication — His intimate, decades-long photographic relationship with Mother Teresa, one of the most admired portrait projects in Indian photography.
Exposure: A Corporate Crime — His definitive documentation of the Bhopal gas disaster and its survivors, first published in 2004 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy.
Tibet in Exile — His coverage of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan exile community in India.
The Sikhs — A major portrait of Sikh culture and community across India.
Calcutta — His photographic essay on one of India's most complex and photographed cities.
Conclusion
Raghu Rai photographed with Nikon cameras from the D100 onwards, preferring zoom lenses for their flexibility and carrying his practice into the mirrorless era with the Nikon Z8. His tools were always secondary to his vision — the vision of a man who spent sixty years looking at India with unflinching honesty and genuine love.
The camera on his chest at his funeral was not a prop. It was a statement about who he was and how he lived. For Raghu Rai, the camera was not an instrument of work. It was, as he said himself, the condition of being true to his own experience.
Photography lost one of its great masters on 26 April 2026.
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