Cataloguing Raghu Rai way !

This Saturday I attended a one day seminar on Photography at PGI Mumbai. Pune to Mumbai is cool three hours these days and hence I could reach at Worli at 10.30 even after taking a fairly large break at Khopoli for breakfast. Incidentally you get some amazing Wada Pav & Misal and stuff there.

While I was walking in the hall , I heard Atul Kasabekar (Kingfisher calendar fame - now everyone remembers him :) ) introducing Tarun Khaiwal ! Both of them are such legendary photographers . Tarun Khaiwal showed some amazing pictures and above all talked about his philosophy about life - which was really amazing.

Post lunch session was Raghu Rai ! He started with a very interesting thought.

"Genius is not borne but they die everyday , only to be born again the next day with a quest to become a genius again !"

He is writting a book on Musical maestros of the country and he is touring with them for quite some time now and this is what he is has inferred out of his interactions with them !

I really felt funny when he said "Genius are nothing different than people like you & me !" I think it was really the height of down to earthness. Someone like Raghu Rai talking about you & me .

Then when he started with his photographs , he showed the first photograph he had clicked - BTW it is a photograph of a donkey , close up or portrait to be precise ! And he could narrate the entire bibliographic information about the photograph. And then those famous photographs of Mango plantation , Mother Feeding the kid , Chaos at Chawari Bazar and so on and so forth. But his cataloguing was so perfect that he could perfectly tell the year , place , description and his special comments ! He is almost 67 now and even at this age he can very clearly remember everything about every photograph he has taken - now that is what is called passion . I remember those old Librarians before computer days , who could tell you about a specific book even without going though the catalogue cards .

Any way now we have the computers at our disposal but the net result is we have lost so many of those soft skills that we possessed earlier.

Anyway "Hats off to you Mr. Raghu Rai - you are not just a great photographer but also an equally good Librarian".