India, May 16 -- For Raghu Rai, the camera was his life, but through it, it was also his way of teaching people the art of living. When he held it in his hands - as he mostly always did - he was holding an exuberance that demanded reverence. The entire world then became the sanctum sanctorum of a sacred space, a pictorial temple, whose key was the lens of his camera.

Raghu and I had been friends for over 40 years. He was much older than me, but I connected immediately with his perpetual curiosity about things, his unmatched creativity, and his zest for life. In the early 1990s, we did a lavish illustrated book together. It was called Raghu Rai's Delhi, for which he asked me to write the text. Of course, his pictures were the substance; m...