Reading Time: 3 minutes

The confidential Swiss Watch Manufacture Vacheron Constantin revealed this month an interesting art partnership with Raghu Rai. His new exhibition is called Divine moments and it is a beautiful enigmatic vision of India daily life.

Among_the_goddesses_Kolkata_1991

RAGHU RAI, born in 1942, originally trained as a civil engineer, before taking up photography at the age of 23, in 1965. A year later, he joined the New Delhi-based national weekly magazine ‘The Statesman’ as their chief photographer, moving on after 10 years to become the picture editor with the prestigious Kolkata based weekly, ‘Sunday’. In 1977 he returned to New Delhi to become the picture editor, as well as its active photographer, for the leading national weekly, ‘India Today’. Henri Cartier Bresson saw an exhibition of Rai’s in Paris at the Galerie Delpire in 1971, and was sufficiently impressed to nominate him to the world-famous Magnum Photo Agency. In the same year he was honoured by the Indian Government with the Padmashree Award-approximately India’s equivalent to a knighthood.

Watch here a mood video about this amazing exhibition:


Unlike many Magnum photographers who have chosen to explore the world on their photography assignments, Raghu Rai has deliberately remained focussed on the universality of Indian life and its many cultures. His work has become known world wide both through exhibitions, book publications and through major international magazine photo-essays. This exhibition has been selected from his wide-ranging photographic oeuvre, to focus on his work in the photography of the street and other public spaces. He has written ‘I like being amongst my own people; I merge with them; I don’t wear stylish clothes; I have one camera with zoom lens so I do not alarm people; no-one says ‘Here comes the photographer’’. Immersing himself in the life of ordinary, anonymous people to record the minutiae of their lived experience, he pays homage to the ever-changing diversity of life in the subcontinent.

Here the website for more details:
http://www.tasveerarts.com/exhibitions/raghu-rai-divine-moments

Exhibition schedule:

Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, 36C S.P. Mukherjee Road, Kolkata – 13 July – 24 July 2012

The Stainless Gallery, Ground Floor , The Mira Corporate Suites 1 & 2 Old Ishwar Nagar Okhla Crossing , Mathura Road, New Delhi – 15 September – 25 September 2012

ICIA, Mumbai – 17 October – 23 October 2012

The Gallery at Sua House, 26/1 Kasturba Cross Road, Bangalore – 07 December – 28 December 2012

Design Gallery, NID, Ahmedabad – 01 February – 10 February 2013

 

Take your time as it is a precious moment.
LA

 

Info sourced at official Press release from Vacheron Constantin and from mattersofart.net. All images are copyrighted with no reproduction rights available.