Author Description

To acclaimed photographer Raghubir Singh, geography is more than the sum of the earth's ever-shifting movements; it is one of the elemental forces that shape a culture's personality and history. Defined by the Coromandel Coast, the Cauvery river, and the mountainous spine of the Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu is a land of rich traditions. Situated in South India, it was spared from the destruction of northern invaders, so that today Tamil Nadu is still home to numerous ancient temples, rising tall over miles and miles of paddy and palm. Yet the signs of modernization are evident as well in factories and power windmills. As R.K. Narayan writes in his preface to the book, "Raghubir Singh's unique photographs of Tamil Nadu express the tradition of temples, the richness and variety of life, change as well as continuity in the environment and life in general.". Although India is his homeland, Tamil Nadu was a place of discovery for Singh, where as he says, "what, at first, had seemed remote and distant, transformed itself into the intimacy of ordinary human lives." It is this intimacy, bred of his devotion to his culture and aesthetic mastery, that makes this book as much a meditation on the nature of Singh's photographic art as it is a long overdue portrait of South India.