Singh is celebrated for his large volumes of city
images. Particularly dramatic are those of Calcutta
and Benares. Although Singh describes Calcutta as a
dying city in his first book (Calcutta,1975),its
images, its living history, its people, and its cultural
artifacts fascinated him. Singh’s stark and dewy
images earned him much criticism. However, he
published a second work on Calcutta (1988), which
was well received. Singh has rarely photographed the
elite of a city as much as he did in Calcutta for his
second book. He photographed the noted filmmaker
Satyajit Ray, actors and actresses, poets, performers,
intellectuals, and artists at work, aptly exposing the
city’s much-acclaimed cultural ambiance. Side by
side, Singh also recorded glimpses of a historic Cal-
cutta, reflected in the grandeur of the colonial edi-
fices and the mansions of the British rulers and
Indian elite alike. Yet, Singh didn’t fail to notice
the city’s humdrum images, fairs and festivals, busy
roadside bazaars, little shops, people walking or
traveling in rickshaws and crowded buses, and the
co-mingling of animals and humans on Calcutta’s
busy streets.
The River Ganges (or Ganga), so important to
every aspect of Indian life, had deeply fascinated
Raghubir Singh since he was a child. He was accus-
tomed to hearing from his mother stories asso-
ciated with the sacred river of India. His passion
for the river brought him back to it several times
between 1966 and 1990, during which time he pro-
duced countless photographs. In 1974, Singh’s
photographs of the River Ganges were published
in a book titled Ganga, Sacred River of India
(1974). In 1992, another collection of Singh’s 123
color photographs was published asThe Ganges.
Singh traces the river from its origin in the snows of
the Himalayas, along the plains of Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar, and Bengal, past cities of Benares, Kanpur,
Patna, and Calcutta, to the Bay of Bengal. Along
this journey, Singh’s images represent the different
contrasting dispositions of the Ganges: its tranquil
beauty at its source and its ferocity over the plains
especially during the monsoons. He captured the
simple, mundane life of people who derived their
existence from the river, as well as the complex,
urban ethos that prevailed in the big cities located
along the Ganges. The journey along the Ganges
and its living images revealed to Singh—and
through the medium of his camera to viewers
around the world—the sacred, historical, social,
economic, and cultural ingredients that symbolized
an India of contrasts, paradoxes, and diversity.
Raghubir Singh visited Benares in the 1980s dur-
ing a solar eclipse. Singh’s vibrant photographs of
the sacred but splendorous Benares waterfront,
showing the frenzy of human activity, are conven-
tional, often picturesque, representations of the
Indian landscape. A contrasting work is presented
in his images of Bombay (1994), in which he mostly
chronicles the hustle and bustle of a modern city
through the vibrant, laissez-faire, and cosmopoli-
tan qualities of its civic makeup.
Raghubir Singh published a colorful collection
of his photographs of Jammu and Kashmir, as well
as of several regions and mountainous tracks in the
northwest provinces of India in a volume titled
Kashmir: Garden of the Himalayas(1983). His pri-
mary interest was in Kashmir’s natural beauty, but
also its non-sectarian side, and its liberal traditions
of art and culture. He visited the area many times
between 1965 and 1982 during various seasons,
following different paths each time. Each season
offered a different view of the picturesque Kash-
mir, which Singh aptly captured through his lens.
Often, Singh followed the course of the rivers and
traced early trade routes. Singh traveled through
the different corridors of the region into Central
Asia, along the shores of the Wular Lake, over the
Razdiangan Pass to the Galley of Gurais.
Other photograph collections of Raghubir Singh
include his works on Bombay, Kerala, and Tamil
Nadu. In all of his works, Singh balances images of
the city with the humdrum lives of its people. At
the same time, Singh creates enduring cultural
documents, taking into account the geography of
the land that helped shape a culture’s history and
personality. The photographs of Tamil Nadu are a
testimony to this. R.K. Narayan points out that
Raghubir Singh’s unique photographs of Tamil
Nadu express the tradition of temples, the richness
and variety of life, and the change as well as con-
tinuity in the environment and life in general.
Singh rejected the idea that his work be labeled as
travel photography, souvenirs, or coffee table books.
Rather, he emphasized that his work embodied
his response to Indian lives as he saw and under-
stood them (Singh, 1988). As V.S. Naipaul rightly
remarked, Singh’s photographs cannot simply be
looked at; they need attention; they have to be read.
In recognition of his contribution to photography,
the government of India awarded the Padma Sri to
Raghubir Singh in 1983. During 1985–1986, the
National Museum of Photography, Film and Televi-
sion, England offered him its first fellowship in
photography. As a Fellow, Singh captured sundry
images in England— from simple images of an Orien-
tal woman in a burqa, of a boy burning rubbish, both
in Bradford, to that of intellectual Nirad C. Chaud-
huri in his Oxford home, and of Margaret Thatcher
appearing on television in an Indian home.SINGH, RAGHUBIR