India, April 26 -- Raghu Rai, one of India's most renowned photographers, died at a private hospital in Delhi on Sunday. He was 83. His son, photographer Nitin Rai, said he had been battling cancer for the past two years. This interview is an excerpt from Rohit Chawla's 2016 interview with Raghu Rai for Open Magazine.

I meet my god through my camera.

Raghu Rai

b. 1942, Jhang (now in Pakistan) / s. New Delhi / p. photography

Coincidences sometimes complete a cycle in hardly imagined ways. My love affair with photography had its genesis in the early 1980s as I watched a tall, lanky man sitting on a balcony across the road with a camera, focusing on life in the street below, as I waited for my school bus. Curiosity led me to climb the st...