Modernism on the Ganges

Raghubir Singh Photographs

One of India's most visionary and celebrated pioneers in colour photography, Raghubir Singh (1942–1999) was a prolific photographer whose creative style revealed the dramatic palette of India’s streets, places and peoples through a distinct lens. Tracing the full trajectory of his career from the late 1960s to his last unpublished projects of the late 1990s, this exhibition showcases the iconic depictions of Indian life and culture in vivid colour.

With India as his lifelong subject, Singh’s artistic vision was at the intersection of East and West; where Western modernism blended with traditional South Asian modes of seeing and representing the world. Using a handheld camera and slide film, Singh’s approach to composition, subject, framing, and lighting, coupled with his embrace of colour presented a unique Indian style of modernist photography that was, as he put it, "on the Ganges side of modernism."