India, April 28 -- Photographs only show a version of truth and objectivity, what gets in the frame is often as important as what is not. With the death of Raghu Rai, India lost not just a photographer, but a way of remembering itself. More than merely documentation; his photographs serve as an evolving archive of the Republic; its power and pageantry, and ruptures and silences. Ordinary, unrecorded life. That idea of photography as a long, accumulating record--almost a parallel history--sits at the heart of how the medium has evolved across the world, as also in India.

Photography a Tool of Power

As Europe entered the Age of Industrialisation, it was accompanied by a growing impulse to observe, classify, and impose order on the world. ...