NYAB Event - Raghu Rai "A Retrospective"

Raghu Rai "A Retrospective"

Aicon Gallery

This event has ended.

Aicon Gallery New York presents a solo exhibition of works by world-renowned Magnum photographer, Raghu Rai. The retrospective will be Rai’s first major solo exhibition in New York.

“Over the centuries, so much has melded into India, that it’s not really one country, and it’s not one culture. It is crowded with crosscurrents of many religions, beliefs, cultures and their practices that may appear incongruous. But India keeps alive the inner spirit of her own civilization with all its contradictions.” - Raghu Rai

Following the critically acclaimed retrospective on Raghu Rai in 2010 at Aicon Gallery-London, which received glowing reviews from The Observer and The Times among others, we are pleased to bring this exclusive solo exhibition, including additional recent works, to our New York space. The successful exhibition with our London gallery brought about Aicon’s partnership with the New Art Exchange (Nottingham, UK) which crystallized Rai’s first UK museum solo show entitled Invocation to India (29 January – 30 April 2011), an essential part of the FORMAT International Photography Festival. The larger theme of the festival is Right Here Right Now: exposures from the public realm and the emphasis “bridges everything from journalism, documentary, art, film and other genres, the essential ingredients being intuition, observation and the ability to compose with space, time and place,” and Raghu Rai’s significance in this realm is perfectly appropriate and fitting.

There is much to be said about the historically important photographer whose prolific career has spanned nearly half a century. Rai has focused on candid snapshots of India that masterfully capture the country’s continuing regional, cultural, and political transformations. Rai’s photographs challenge viewers to confront a country where temporalities merge people, objects, animals, and buildings collide in a majestic visual symphony. His works are extracted from a complex external reality such that, in Raghu Rai’s words, “When I slice out a space, a moment, it should be done with such simplicity and faithfulness that when I give it back to life, life starts moving and flowing around it without a stutter”.

Raghu Rai – A Retrospective will display works from as early as the 1970’s to his present day projects, the great majority of which will be shown for the very first time in the United States. Four themes in his current works may be identified as “Rocks”, “Backdrops”, “Clouds,” and “Trees” which incorporate photomontage. Past works which encapsulate his canonical style will be shown. The retrospective aims to capture both the past and present with an emphasis on evolution and development regarding both the artist and subjects.

Born in 1942 in a village in present-day Pakistan, Rai’s illustrious career has bestowed him many national and international awards from a diverse array of publics, including the arts, journalism, and governments, such as being nominated in 1977 by Henri Cartier-Bresson to Magnum Photos; receiving the Padamshree Award from India (1971) and L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France (2008); publishing in magazines and newspapers including Time, Life, GEO, New York Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent, and The New Yorker among others; authoring over twenty books on his life and works; and serving as a jurist for the World Press Photo and the UNESCO’s International Photo contest.

[Image: Raghu Rai "GANPATI CELEBRATION, MUMBAI" (2001) Digital scan of photographic negative on archival paper, 20 x 30 in.]