FROM THE OUTSIDE IN
Seen together, RAGHU RAI’s pictures of France and Ambassador EMMANUEL LEANIN’s photos of India help us delight in our shared humanity
France has always adored Raghu Rai. In 1971, the muchcelebrated Henri CartierBresson made it a point to visit Rai’s first solo show before Paris’s Galerie Delpire got crowded. He, obviously, liked what he saw. He invited Rai home for dinner, and all the while he was in Paris, Bresson sent his colleagues over to keep the young photographer fed and entertained. “He gave me a lot of bhav (importance),” laughs Rai. Upon returning to India, he found a telex message waiting for him. Bresson
had asked him to join his renowned Magnum Photo agency. The confidence to say yes only came to Rai six years later.
Over the years, French magazines have invited Rai to contribute. Galleries have hosted retrospectives. In 2009, he was conferred the Officier des Arts et des Letters by the French government and, in 2019, he became the first photographer laureate of Paris’s Académie des Beaux-Arts. Given Rai’s celebrity in his country, Emmanuel Leanin thought it best to look the photographer up when he came to Delhi as France’s ambassador in 2019. A keen photographer for 30-odd years, Leanin showed Rai some of his work. “His photos were very interesting,” says Rai, “and each time he would go travelling, to places like Ladakh and Hampi, he came back with pictures I thought were even better.”
The idea to collaborate on To France/ In India, a sumptuous book of blackand-white photographs, came from Rai: “When I told Emmanuel we should do a book—‘You in India and me in France’—he jumped on the idea. Even though our sense of space, our energies, are very different, I could see the passion in him. I knew this was going to be fun.” Leanin, for his part, does not look at politics and photography as disparate—“they both help me make sense of a people, their culture, their history”. But the “meaningful” world of politics, he admits, “is also sometimes a little mean”. This is why, he adds, he likes befriending artists. “Rather than competing for the existing pie, they make a new one.”
While the words ‘to France’ do certainly seem to denote a journey, Rai’s pictures of the country often make you think that he is also raising a toast. His photos of Paris, in particular, brim with a very tangible joy. “This city has been photographed by the best of the best,” says Rai, “I always knew that the photos I take here have to be as alive and powerful. Going to Paris and photographing it became a pilgrimage for me.” Though To France collects photos that Rai has taken over a period of 23 years (1996-2019), they all do seem to have some features in common: the escape they offer and the drama they capture.
Rai’s pictures are sometimes made dramatic
WHILE THERE IS AN UNMISTAKABLE JOY IN RAI’S IMAGES OF FRANCE, IN LEANIN’S PHOTOS THERE IS A GREATER EMPHASIS ON BLACK HUMOUR
by his subjects—a nun in rapture, drag queens in a pride parade—but there are instances where he uses only a stray cloud to make his picture memorable. When asked if he has always had a predilection for this kind of visual drama, Rai remembers the time he used to regularly photograph Indira Gandhi: “The one channel we had—Doordarshan—would always show her. Every newspaper had Indira Gandhi on the front page. So, if I was photographing her every day, I realised very early on that my photograph would have to have a current, an energy that could touch and move you. As time passed, I soon realised it’s not about stories or drama; it’s about the human instinct. One needs to capture that instinctive energy which oozes out of situations.”
Predictably, Rai’s portraits that we see in To France are all striking, but it’s in his pictures of couples, of crowds—especially those he encounters inside the Louvre—that he regularly seems to find that “rare magic” he seeks. Everything
else, as he says, “is just business”. In Leanin’s In India, on the other hand, we see far more individuals photographed. “In the West,” he says, “you’ll often hear these cliches about India—it’s all about the group, the holistic society. I wanted to show it’s not that.”
Leanin’s portraits of migrants, child beauty pageant contestants or of a man holding a knife can be both warm and disconcerting. While there is an unmistakable joy in Rai’s images of France, in Leanin’s photos there is a greater emphasis on black humour—a man naps on a grave, a mannequin resembles an apparition: “In India, there is a greater acceptance of the physical representations of death. In France, we try to hide it. Here, I think you’re more courageous with it all.”
Not all of Leanin’s pictures are wry and ironic. His photographs of Delhi’s crematoriums and cemeteries during the Covid second wave are, at times, harrowing to see. “What struck me is that the even during this very rough period, you felt that same sentiment of common humanity, that same sense of grief, at ceremonies of these different faiths.”
In the end, says Leanin, it is that same idea of “a common humanity” which became the driving force behind To France/ In India: “In spite of the obvious differences between our countries, Raghu and I wanted to show that our people share these great qualities and a lot of humanity.” Hearing Rai delight in Leanin’s pictures is, perhaps, evidence that art can help escape our narrow subjectivities. “Have you seen Emmanuel’s picture of two girls dancing in Jama Masjid?” he asks us. “I have been there a million times and never experienced something like it. He has captured a ‘moment of eternity’.” ■