Paris (AFP)
The Indian photographer Raghu Rai, 77, noticed by Henri Cartier-Bresson and famous for his reports on the social realities of India, received Friday the new Photography Award of the Academy of Fine Arts / William Klein, endowed of 120,000 euros, announced the Institut de France.
For the past eighteen years, Raghu Rai, who lives in New Delhi, has dedicated his work exclusively to his country. His photographic reports have been published in magazines and newspapers around the world.
About fifty works dedicated to the events and figures of his country are to his credit: Delhi, the Sikhs, Calcutta, the Taj Mahal, Mother Teresa, the war of independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the disaster of Bhopal in 1984 .. .
Holder of the "Padma Shri" in 1972, one of the highest Indian distinctions, for a work devoted to the war of Bangladesh, he was designated in 1992 "photographer of the year" by the United States for a subject on the "Human Management of Wildlife in India" published in National Geographic.
Born in 1942 in Jhang (present-day Pakistan), Raghu Rai, a photographer at the age of 23, worked at The Statesman newspaper as chief photographer (1966 to 1976) before becoming editor-in-chief of Sunday's magazine. Calcutta.
In 1971, following his exhibition at the Galerie Delpire in Paris on the Bengali refugees from Bengal, Henri Cartier-Bresson proposed to him to integrate Magnum Photos, of which he is still associated. In 1982, he became director of photography for India Today, India's leading news magazine.
This new prize was created in tribute to the work of William Klein, photographer, painter, visual artist, film director. It will be given to Raghu Rai at the Institut de France on October 30th.
It must be awarded every two years, alternating with the Marc Ladreit Prize of photography of Lacharrière, financed by a company of the French businessman.
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