Filmmaker Satyajit Ray captured on camera on the sets of Bengali film 'Ghare Baire' is among a slew of portraits assembled by ace photographer Raghu Rai in his new book aptly titled 'People'. Ray's photograph in black and white considered to be a masterpiece has a story behind it, reveals Rai. "He lay down on the same bed, smoking his pipe, on which his heroine was sitting and I took some pictures from the front. "Then I moved towards the other side from where you could only see his back and I realised the lighting was very dramatic. You could see the adjoining room through the door and there were spectacular shadows falling on the wall," says the photographer. The images in the book, published by Aleph, reveals moments and people in both candid and staged and describe Rai's inexplicable sense to capture the truth of the person through his lens. Apart from portraits of film personalities and celebrities captured in shining black and white in their most candid expressions, the book also contains a compilation of Rai's best photographs of people. The pictures, he says, were taken for specific magazines or newspaper assignments and as Rai says have happened as "a result of spontaneous magic." "When I take a person's portrait, I am trying to capture the aura of that person. I am trying to get the truth of that person to emerge in the photographs," he says. "My portraits of musicians in the book looked strong because they all were a candid study of them. M S Subbulakshmi's portrait was taken when she was performing. Bismillah Khan's portrait was taken when he was in jugalbandi with Vilayat Khan," Rai writes.
