From Our Archives: RaGhubir Singh: Welcome Home

Ram Rahman, Catching the Breeze, Hathod Village, Jaipur, Rajasthan, 1975.

This article was featured in Issue No. 18 - Humanity

A pioneer colorist, Singh discovered the ecstasy of color during his countless journeys across the Indian subcontinent: on the banks of the Ganges – he traveled the river from its source in the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal – in the Kashmir mountains, in remote villages, in the bustle of city crowds. In Singh’s images, the rich, seductive hues of India, the vermillion of women’s saris, the saffron of sadhus’ robes, the ruby of turbans, mingle with the tawny browns of earth after a monsoon and the kaleidoscopic, eye-popping colors of Westernization: omnibuses, plastic bags, television sets, posters, storefronts, cars.

In his images, Singh sought intimacy with his own civilization. He loved photographing dense crowds of worshipers at festivals: panoramas of thousands of dark heads and light robes of pilgrims bathing in the Ganges. He took pictures of village bus stops, weddings, funerary pyres, bullocks, dogs, goats, elephants, street performers, solitary yogis in the mountains, taxi drivers, dock workers, water sellers, devotees to Shiva, Christians and Muslims, women holding children in their arms or caught in the monsoon rain, kids swinging on a tree trapeze, about to fly away over the village roofs. Often compared to the Rajput and Mughal miniaturist paintings, Singh’s photographs radiate the bliss of being in the presence of humanity. Each is a condensation of life in all of its forms, distilled to extract its rush and cyclic transformations. Together they unite into a flow that from one photograph to the next enacts in silver halides India’s cosmic order.

Read the rest of the article in Musée Magazine's Issue No. 18 - Humanity

Ram Rahman, Monsoon Rains, Monghyr, Bihar, 1967.