How music found its voice in Raghu Rai’s pictures

For many years before I met Raghu Rai, I encountered him through his images.

My first introduction to his work came through his extraordinary photographs of India’s great classical musicians — M.S. Subbulakshmi, Pt Bhimsen Joshi, Ustad Bismillah Khan, Ustad Vilayat Khan, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia, Kishori Amonkar and several others. The images did not merely document their performances, but held something far more elusive: spirit, surrender, divinity and life itself. They became my doorway into his vast body of work. And through them, I began to understand why Raghu Rai’s photography occupies such an unparalleled place in India’s cultural memory.