A self taught photographer, Raghubir Singh was one of the pioneers of colour photography. He was known for his unconventional style of photography and creative use of space in his photographs. Many of his most celebrated pictures effectively juxtapose contemporary India in its conventional setting. This is best exemplified in his last publication, A Way into India where the quintessentially Indian Ambassador car has been captured in every frame along with conventional Indian backdrops.
Raghubir Singh was born in Jaipur in 1942. He took to photography from his high school days when his mother gifted him a camera. Singh pursued his passion further from the Hindu college in Delhi where he started working on photo features for renowned international publications like Life and The New York Times. Singh then moved to Calcutta to find a job in the tea industry along with his elder brother. However, destiny had something else in store for him.
During his stay in Calcutta, Singh got a chance to meet the Father of the Parallel Cinema in India, Satyajit Ray through RP Gupta who had taken a liking to Singh’s photography. The meeting proved to be an inspiration for Singh, an ardent admirer of Ray’s cinematic vision and his contemporary narrative form, to further develop his photography skills.
History of Photography
He was one of the finest fashion photographers the world has seen but Richard Avedon is also known for his astounding contribution in the development of portraiture photography. Nominated among the world’s 10 greatest photographers by Popular Photography magazine, Avedon also held an honorary doctorate from Royal College of Art in London. As a photographer, he had the special gift of bringing out the soul of his subject in his photographs. In his highly successful career, Avedon photographed several glamorous celebrities and models alike, however his most admired and touching images where those of his dying father.
Born to a Jewish-Russian family in New York on 15th May, 1923, Richard Avedon was a photographer in the making from his early teen years. He gave up high school midway to follow his passion for photography and started working as a photographer for Merchants Marines in 1942. In 1944, he took up photography assignments for a department store and was soon picked up by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for Harper’s Bazaar. Avedon more than lived up to Brodovitch’s expectations and was soon rewarded the post of chief photographer with the renowned magazine, thanks to his hard work, photography skills and unique perspective.
Peter Lindbergh was born on 23rd Nov, 1944 in Lissa and grew up in Duisburg, a small city in western part of Germany. He spent much of his teen life working as a window dresser for the Karstadt and Horten department stores in his city. At the age of 18, he moved to Switzerland for eight months before returning to Berlin where he started taking evening courses at the Academy of Fine Arts. Drawing inspiration from his idol, Vincent van Gogh, Lindbergh then decided to hitchhike his way to Arles in the South of France and for the next two years his journey continued through Spain and Morocco. On his return to Germany, Lindbergh started studying Free Painting at the College of Art in Krefeld (North Rhine-Westphalia) and exhibited his work for the first time as a student at the renowned Galerie Denise René/Hans Mayer.
Helmut Newton revolutionized fashion photography with his signature style. He is best known for his controversial yet technically brilliant study of nude women, ‘Big Nudes’ published in 1980. Throughout his career, he worked for the biggest names in fashion and was honoured with some of the most prestigious awards for his enormous contribution to the world of photography.
Helmut Newton was born into a wealthy German-Jewish family on 31st October 1920 in Berlin and was named Helmut Neustädter. His father owned a factory which manufactured buttons and buckles. Born to an American mother, Newton attended the American school in Berlin-Schöneberg before switching to the Secondary school in Berlin-Grunewald after moving homes. But he dropped out of school in 1936 and decided to follow his passion for photography by taking up an apprenticeship with the portrait, nude and fashion photographer Yva (Else Simon, neé Neuländer) in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Even the words “Master of all” fall terribly short to describe the talent of Man Ray. Ray wasn’t just an exceptional photographer but also an accomplished painter, poet, philosopher, filmmaker, essayist and a modernist. In fact, Ray thought that he was far better at painting than at photography but his followers feel otherwise. His portraits and fashion work revolutionized these genres of photography and continue to influence the present generation of photographers.
Man Ray was born into a Russian Jewish immigrant family in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 27th August 1890. He spent most of his childhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Ray was originally named as Emanuel Radnitzky but the family changed their last name to Ray fearing discrimination because of the raging anti-Semitism sentiments in the US at the time. Ray later decided to go by his nickname “Manny” as his first name and started to be known as Man Ray.
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