One day, Raghavendra Rao assigned me to shoot a picture of a fragrance outlet. After three days of struggle, I came up with a simple picture of a woman choosing her fragrance at a cosy outlet. But I was not very happy with the result. I printed it out and sent it to him with a note saying, ‘I am not happy.’
A week later, I was stunned to see the picture on the Life page of BusinessLine . The picture was spread across six columns, divided into six strips. I called him to ask how he did it. He just said: “You were not happy with the frame, so I wanted to make it interesting.”
KN Raghavendra Rao was not only a photojournalist. He was a philosopher and thinker, and mentor to seven photographers at
This composer of visual images died on Tuesday of complications after a bypass surgery. Raghavendra Rao was 82. When he passed on, he was surrounded by all his children and grandchildren at the home of his younger son in Ahmedabad. Though conversations had become difficult towards the end, there is no doubt he responded to vibrations around him. For vibrations lay at the heart of his life and work — including 21 years at
Raoji, as he was popularly known, would read the light like a musician examining his notes. To him, compositions were like chords to a musical instrument. And it didn't end with the photograph: he took special interest in giving each image the display it deserved.
In those days, when we shot on film and printed on bromide paper, he would tell us: “Visualise your print before you shoot your picture.”
After I was inducted into his team at BusinessLine in 1994, Raoji told me: “Don’t take your camera. Go and look at the world around you. Observe life closely; absorb every object in your mind and think about it. Relate it with the issues, the agendas, government proposals... Then go back again with your camera. You will come back with great images of simple acts of life with great thought.” These words have remained the guiding principle for me and many others whom he patiently mentored.
We thought we were stuck with business journalism, which is considered not-so-lens-friendly and monotonous. But he would say, “Look into the eyes of the street vendor, the worker, the executive. You will then understand each one’s plight. Capture the mood with a sense of poetry. Narrate it through the play of light. Make it interesting.”
He was unconventional, contemporary, yet steeped in tradition. He had a rare sense of visual narrative. He was partial to vertical perspectives. To my why, he remarked with a smile, “Usually, you see things horizontally. A vertical viewpoint creates an abstract sense in your mind… gets special attention too.”
He ended our last conversation saying: “Write your words with your pictures. Take pictures for yourself, you will find peace.”