Raghu Rai was India's most celebrated photojournalist. He died on April 26th 2026, aged 83. Trained as a civil engineer, he was nudged into photography after a shot of a donkey foal in rural Haryana was published by the Times of London. Henri Cartier-Bresson invited him to join Magnum in 1972 after seeing his work at a Paris exhibition; he took five years to reply. He worked for a decade at India Today. He produced more than 18 books of photo essays.
He chronicled two of India's worst moments: the Bangladeshi war of independence in 1971 and the December 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, which killed 8,000 immediately and 12,000 more slowly. His Bhopal photo of a man brushing earth from the face of a buried child became the iconic image of the tragedy. Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, the tabla player Zakir Hussain and the director Satyajit Ray were among his subjects. His favourite city was Varanasi. He used a Nikon Z8 with a zoom lens.
Laugh, and the world ignores you. Crying doesn't help either.