What makes human beings different from one another - it’s the experiences they encounter and the lessons they learn and pass on. Raghu Ji might be the father of photography, but to me he is a philosopher, a thinker and a human being who looks beyond the viewfinder and into the lives of his subjects - be it a tree or a human being. Whenever I have interacted with him, I have been left enriched. His profound and clear thinking puts things in perspective. He is an extension of his artistry and that’s what makes him such an inspiration and an honest artist. A lot has been written about Raghu Ji, therefore, I wanted to know about things that held a special place in his heart and where his interests lay. His daughter Avani, a very sensitive photographer herself, captured fragments of his life’s collections, while he patiently reminisced and relived those moments. But before that I couldn’t help ask him to share his thoughts on the heart, mindset and the hear and now.
PURITY OF HEART
“Photography is a reflection of your heart, and its purity. If there is purity, which is instinct, then your image will also have the purity and the freshness of the moment you’ve captured. Not everybody is capable of subtleties. You need to have the eye to see those things. However, these days, in times of digital technology, you take out your heart, put it in the sensor of the camera, and continue to take photos. If you throw away the sensor and put your heart there instead, then it will have your stamp on it. Who you are and how you as an individual receive and perceive the world can be reflected. It is you doing it the way nature and situations expect you to do it, you are not the vase.
I go shoot with all my heart. When I come back, I am excited and I am charged. I deliver and then it is forgotten. When I shoot, I am a student of life and nature, dedicated to it, waiting to receive and explore. Life and nature are subjects, and they are everything. Their facets change such that you remain amazed and enthralled at where you’ve come. You’re standing in the ocean of life and nature, and if your antennas are open and you are an awake soul, then there is no need to think, feel or have a mindset. You just need to experience it. Your heart should beat within the sensor, it should have a heartbeat.”
THE MINDSET
“Please don’t use this word for me — ‘mindset’. I don’t have a mind. It’s been almost 50 years for me in photography. We all know that Nirvana is about being free. Getting rid of your mind space. Businessmen, politicians, lawyers, they do the thinking — they have a mindset, they have plans. Creative folk don’t have plans. The other day, I was speaking to a close friend who is an artist. I told him, ‘You’ve started living in concepts. Art should be like this, life should be like this, people should be nice, so-and-so should do this or not do this — this is all mindset. But what is actually happening, right now, is the reality.’ And to connect to that and live in the moment gives you new awareness of things. So, my children, sometimes they shake me up. But most of the times, I shake them up.”
‘These are my old prints, which Avani wanted to photograph — silver gelatin prints. And my portrait is taken by Swapan Parekh, in ’84, ’86.’
LIFE IN COLOUR OR BLACK AND WHITE
“During film days, we used to carry two cameras — one for colour, one for black and white. Now, I carry one camera, which is a digital camera. It captures in colour and when you are not happy with the colour, you can merge it with the black and white. Sometimes children talk to me about Instagram, but for me it’s a diarrhoea of colours and pretty pictures. It looks so stupid. Now with digital technology, all the colours tend to be so dramatic and so artificial. So, sometimes with vengeance, I convert my pictures into black and white.”
PHOTOGRAPHY TODAY
“People are now, or even in the last 10-15 years, trying to do different, new photography. It is contentless, it is expressionless, it is colourless. It lacks any exploration and discovery. What happens is, in any art form, once a saturation point has been reached, where do you go from there? When you are capturing a moment in space — thousands of photographers have captured millions of moments in space — the new generation is bound to think, ‘Where am I stuck now? I’m trying to capture a moment in space but it is already filled with all kinds of moments.’ But the fact is, at any given moment, each individual and his characteristics, his body experiences, his mind space, respond to things differently. There is never an end to exploring new possibilities.
Secondly, there is a vengeance with a direction in photography or a style in photography — ‘I won’t do this, I won’t do that.’ Sure, don’t do it. Whatever doesn’t stem from the heart, is temporary and false. See, before getting into any art form — you may call it your responsibility or a liability — you have got to know what has been done in the past, what is happening today, and what should be the magic for the future. Who has such capability? They don’t have it. And today’s generation is the fast-food, fast-forward generation. They are looking for instant gratification. If you go to a guru, they will say, ‘Come clean my house, clean my things, clean my sitar and sit beside the door and just keep listening.’ Till the time he calls you to learn, you have spent 2 years or 6 years. But that journey, to enter that pure space, nobody has the time for it anymore. And the digital technology, auto-focus, auto-exposure, auto-colour — boom, boom, boom! Anybody can take a flawless, well-exposed, colourful picture. So why should they waste their time?
To enter a meditative space is an entirely differently ballgame. It takes a hold of you. So, if you treat the art as your dharma, your religion, then you would know how to worship it. If you don’t know how to worship, how to pray, then you’ve made it into a profession, an antithesis of everything that you are.
THE HERE AND NOW
“If you are not in the here and now, you get left behind. It is all about dharma and karma. It is my dharma and karma that I am here today to give and receive. People say, ‘Oh you’re almost 80 and still have so much energy.’ I say I invest so much into it. When you invest everything, you get a good return as well. I have crores of rupees in terms of life’s treasures and I have invested it all, so life is bound to give back to me. It’s not a one-way traffic.”
This article is an all exclusive from our December EZ. To read more such articles follow the link here.
Words Shruti Kapur Malhotra
Images Avani Rai
Date 29-12-2021