New Delhi, April 26 -- At the India Art Fair earlier this year, a selection of Raghu Rai's photographs took centrestage at PHOTOINK's booth. The black-and-white imagery hailed from the series Confessions of a Wall, shot between 1973 and 1977. The photos looked at the wall, not just as a physical demarcation between the public and the private realms, but also as a backdrop to the way life in the city unfolds and bodies respond to space and situations. With the subjects often looking straight into the camera, reaching out to you across time, you get an immediate sense of their response to the challenges of urban life. Some images are contemplative and poignant, others are playful.

A particularly interesting scene unfolds in a photo studio ...