Raghu Rai is India’s most famous photojournalist. A retrospective of his work opened at Aicon Gallery, in New York City on February 18 and wraps up on March 19.

This is an invitation for you to join me and a small group of image makers interested or curious about India. Meet us on the 19th (this Saturday) at the gallery at 10.30 am, to take in the body of work Mr. Rai has created over the last 40 years. We will also meet up for a cup of chai or coffee afterwards. It’s essentially a very loosely structured networking event that I want to start doing more often either in New York, Hartford (where I live) or in Boston. If you are interested in photojournalism or documentary photography, you might find kindred spirits among us to trade stories, referrals or more.

Shreeya Sinha, a multimedia journalist and producer, will also join us as well. Having lived and worked in India, for Undesired, I felt she might provide us the right perspective on Raghu Rai’s own mostly domestic work.

Aicon Gallery is located at 35 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012. If you are lost, please call 212-725-6092. Take the #6 Subway line to Bleecker Street and walk North on Lafayette Street for two blocks, then a right onto Great Jones Street. Aicon Gallery should be on your right hand side.

Meanwhile, check out the recent podcast SAJA hosted with Mr. Rai. Also view his work on the Magnum website. If you are inclined to buy one of Raghu Rai’s books, I recommend Raghu Rai’s India: Reflections in Colour. [aff]

So, tell me … are you already a fan of Raghu Rai’s work? What can you tell me/us about him? Although I am familiar with some of his work, I know little about the man so I am interested in seeing this exhibit in hopes that it will reveal something about him.

I hope to see many of you there. It would be great to know of a headcount before hand so that there are no surprises. Would you please comment below if you are able to make it? Thank you!

If anyone knows who photographed Mr. Rai in the above photograph, please let me know. I would like to credit the image, if it is still ok to display the image.

This a guest post by Ken Jarecke, a world-renowned photojournalist and founding member of Contact Press Images, an illustrious photo agency based in New York. Please also visit and read his blog, Mostly True.

The past few years it’s been hard for me to pick up a camera. We all know that the industry, at least the editorial side of it, has been at an all time low. Sure, I’ve worked to put a good face on it, like in this piece on the New York Times Lens blog, but more often than not, my desire to make wonderful images has been absent. My heart has just not been there.

It’s not the creative side. I’ve rarely cared about the choices editors make about my work. That’s never been my motivation. Besides, I figured if I made great images, they’d get published. Somewhere. Sometime.

For example, here’s a take from the Beijing Olympics. After nine Olympics, I felt this was the best job I’d ever done. Normally, the Olympics will generate tons of tear-sheets, but outside of China, where my agency had a deal with the local English language newspaper, I managed to get only a single image published (in a French newspaper).

Frustrating to be sure, but still, not something that would stop me from making pictures.

No, I’m sad and ashamed to report that my lack of desire stemmed from nothing more than a lack of money. More specifically, the constant worry, and the ongoing struggle to pay the bills had taken its toll.

It’s sad, because I didn’t become a photojournalist to get rich (I was never that crazy or misguided). I’m ashamed because much of my money problems were the direct result of poor or stubborn decisions that are completely my fault.

In the past, I hesitated to book weddings. I made the excuse that I couldn’t book something that far in advance. What if an editorial job came up? In reality, I felt this type of work was beneath me. I felt the same about the portrait market (Yes, I know where this is being read). It’s easy to say now, but what’s more important than a wedding, or capturing a child’s life? Oh well, live and learn.

I didn’t let the magazines determine if a picture was good or not, but I sure put them in charge of what was important enough for me to photograph!

Pride and arrogance, a nasty couple of vices. As you can imagine, the only people to suffer from the choices I made was my family. Over the past few years, we’ve cut expenses, and eliminated most of the extras that come with family life, in my vain attempt to reinvent the editorial market and make things right (vanity, there’s another one).

Although I never stopped loving being a dad or a husband, the only thing I accomplished was to give my family a grouchy dad who hated making pictures.

As a photojournalist, I always try to have a backup plan. I would look at every situation with the perspective of a worse possible case scenario. Like, what would happen if I got a two flat tires in a post-Katrina New Orleans?

Practical to be sure, but it also gave me a sense of being in control. Maybe we all do this. It would explain tings like always having a pocket bulging with extra batteries.

Well, about three weeks ago, I ran into a situation that I couldn’t control. One of our children came home from camp very sick. It took twelve days for the doctors to figure out what was wrong. Plenty of uncertainty. Lots of prayers. Scary times. I don’t want to put too fine of a point on it. She spent four nights in the hospital and has been home for about a week now. She’s getting better everyday and is on her way to a full recovery.

Ironically, being in this powerless situation has seemed to heal me also. I have no cares about my reputation, or my standing in the photography world. I should be totally freaked about the medical bills (on top of everything else), but instead they just don’t seem important. I just want to be a better dad and husband (I thought I always was, but I didn’t give any thought to the huge burden I had placed on my family).

Strangest of all, I also want to make some really good pictures. Go figure.

I’m working on getting some portrait jobs… I booked one yesterday! I did my first wedding back in June. I gotta say, I really enjoyed it. The pictures were good too! I hope I have the chance to do some more.

The medical bills? Well, I hope to pay for some of them with a special print sale. I’m going to offer eight or ten prints at a special price for seven days only. They’re signed, archival pigment prints made by me.

You can see a preview here. I don’t know what the final selection will be, but I’m open to suggestions. Please check the above site on Monday to find out. The 17” x 22”s will be $300 and the 8.5” x 11”s will be $97 (plus shipping).

The two black & whites shown here are from an essay I did for Time magazine in 1990 called, “The Rotting of the Big Apple”. They’ve been very popular with collectors over the years.

The image from the Tiananmen Square student protests of 1989, shows a lone hunger striker sitting in front of Chinese soldiers. It has also been popular with collectors. At some point it was named “The Rose”. The Beijing Opera performer was made in May of 2007. It’s one that I like. I think it works well.

If you have ever considered creating a photography collection for yourself, Ken’s offering here would be a terrific start. In fact, I have already told Ken that I will be buying one of his prints! Supporting each other through the valleys and peaks of life is what will make us stronger. Give it some thought, but don’t wait too long because these prints are very likely to be gone soon.

UPDATE: Ken sent me this slideshow that you see below. It has all the images he has on sale through this Friday (September 10, 2010). I hope this inspires you to invest in one of his images.

The NYTimes is rightly fascinated by the blind making photographs. Read All About It Here.

And if you don’t have a NYTimes account, you can read the article below.

Photographers Make Art as Another Way of Seeing
By ERIN CHAN

Ben Paige cannot see light; he cannot see anything. But to create photographs — his pictures are haunting, in black and white with light that swirls and sways and sprays — Mr. Paige does not need to see. Besides, in a certain sense, he already does.

Mr. Paige relies on concepts he has already visualized, and on what he hears, touches, smells and tastes, as well as what he remembers from the three decades before his sight went away. Sometimes, he has an idea days before he creates a picture. Other times, inspiration hits him as he walks into the photo studio.

He is part of Seeing With Photography Collective, which works out of the basement studio at Visions at Selis Manor, 135 W. 23rd Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, a community center for people who are blind.

Among the others in the collective are Sonia Soberats, who, like Mr. Paige, takes the Access-a-Ride shuttle to the studio every Thursday, and Ed Bassuk, who has cataracts. He shuffles in each week from Chelsea with his assistant, usually toting a Peruvian felt hat as a prop and a disposable camera for candid shots.

When Ms. Soberats, 65; Mr. Paige, 67; Mr. Bassuk, 86; and others arrive, they navigate six sets of doors and a staircase to reach the studio in the basement, where they find other members of the collective and some sighted volunteers.

To people in the collective, photography is more than a hobby: it is a chance, in a way, to see again. “I put all my heart and soul into it,” said Mr. Paige, who lost his sight to cataracts 35 years ago. “It means everything to me.”

The collective has put together a 54-piece exhibition called “From Within: A Photographic Exhibit of Work by Visually Impaired Artists,” which runs through Oct. 24 at the Hudson Guild’s Gallery II at 119 Ninth Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets. Last week, several in the collective headed to Arnheim, the Netherlands, to talk about their methods with the sighted and the blind.

The instructor, Mark Andres, started teaching photography to people with impaired vision 17 years ago at Lighthouse International, a nonprofit organization focused on vision rehabilitation. Five years ago, after experimenting with photograms, which are produced by exposing objects on photo paper, Mr. Andres started leading the collective in a technique called light painting. So far, the group has embraced light painting with the zeal of a thrill seeker trying a new roller coaster.

Members of the collective incorporate one another in their photographs, turning friends, many of whom they have never seen, into art. They capture scenes and concepts they have already constructed mentally — for example, confinement in a doghouse, a metaphor for the difficulties of being disabled in a world built for those who are not.

For his part, Mr. Paige wants to evoke fear in his photographs. On a recent Thursday, Mr. Paige set up to shoot a subway ride with three passengers reading newspapers, their heads on the seats beside them.

“It’s the train from hell,” Mr. Paige said. “I do very scary pictures. It makes people stand up and pay attention. When people say `Wow!’ that’s when I know I’ve accomplished what I’m looking for.”

As Mr. Paige sat on a chair that would soon become a row of subway seats, Stephen Dominguez, a photographer for 16 years who has only partial sight in one eye because of glaucoma and cataracts, helped him set up.

Using the collective’s usual method, Mr. Paige left the shutter of his Speed Graphic open so that he and Mr. Dominguez could manipulate different aspects of the scene. That way, they could capture multiple images on a single frame.

Handling his flashlight as deftly as a laser pointer, Mr. Dominguez highlighted human torsos, subway poles and rubber mice. He muted other items, mainly people’s heads. As the lighted items’ images were recorded on the film, the nonlighted heads remained dark. Mr. Dominguez lighted them only when the passengers shifted positions and their heads rested on top of the makeshift subway benches.

When the lights came on, there on the film were the headless newspaper readers with their lost heads on the seats beside them. But when Mr. Paige heard Mr. Dominguez describe the photo, he was not fully satisfied. He started over. After four tries over two weeks, Mr. Paige finally heard a description he liked and declared his photo done.

Ms. Soberats’s intentions are different. She seeks beauty rather than fear. For her, creating photographs has not only instilled a sense of pride — she insists on doing all the lighting — but also serves as a form of therapy. In 1991, glaucoma took her sight, a few months after Hodgkin’s disease killed her only son and a couple years before ovarian cancer killed her only daughter.

Ms. Soberats worked through her grief and found an outlet in photography two years ago. She first came to the class to learn how to take pictures of her family, and eventually found a form of self-expression.

“When I tell people I do photography, they don’t believe me,” she said. “When a person achieves something that others think you can’t because you are blind, you feel it much more.”