Snapshot: ‘Bombay’ by Raghubir Singh
By Charlotte Irwin
The photographer captured not only the vibrancy of the city, but its energy at a moment of great social and economical change.
Jaipur-born Raghubir Singh (1942-1999) is best known for focusing his lens on his native India, and his images of Bombay in the 1990s make up one of the artist’s most celebrated bodies of work. Singh’s commitment to colour photography, and his controlled approach to it, meant that he captured not only the vibrancy of the city, but its energy at a moment of great social and economical change. Twenty-seven of these dramatic images now make up “Bombay”, an exhibition that honours the storytelling power of Singh’s photographs. As Nobel laureate VS Naipaul said of Singh’s work: “You cannot take it all in at once. You have to let your eye move from centre to centre, so there is constant movement in the picture . . . with pictures like these one almost doesn’t need words.”
‘Bombay’ is at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, until December 9.