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Eyes on the world: Veteran lensman Raghu Rai talks about the digital age

Also discusses keeping a record of history and why his camera is not aimed at the pandemic

Raghu Rai, photographer
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Under lockdown in the past year, Rai has been working on putting together a dozen or so books from his archives | Illustration: Binay Sinha

Pavan Lall Mumbai
Raghu Rai can’t stop smiling. I tell him I’ve seen his work since I was 10, and hope to really meet him some time. That’s funny to the veteran, award-winning 79-year-old photographer. “My mission is not yet complete, and so I will be back and I will see you in real life. So please live in that continuity,” he says, laughing, reminding me of Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Rai, a sprightly man who looks 15 years younger, is bursting with sto­ries, most of them so humorous that he can’t help but laugh before he narrates them.

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