One of the oldest cities in the world, Varanasi has remained unchanged over the centuries. The prayers the pilgrims chant as they walk its sacred streets, and the hope of redemption they bring with them, are the same as they were hundreds of years ago.
In this magnificent book, made up of images culled from over three decades of work, Raghu Rai captures more of the city’s distinctive, timeless character than anyone else ever has. From its busy ghats to its teeming lanes and bylanes to its daily rituals of death and renewal, Rai documents the intensity of people’s faith. The India Rai mirrors is not a piece of exotica but real, human, multilayered and his best pictures convey the extraordinary simultaneity of Indian street life; each contains not one but several decisive moments.
As Rai’s photographs demonstrate, the secular and the profane coexist in Varanasi; the old can hardly be told from the new, and everything is experienced all at once. For Rai, each trip to the city is like a new awakening, and each time he emerges purified and fulfilled. For the reader, happily, the effect is the same. Whether one is a believer or not, the book draws one into the depths of an ancient civilization.
