Ram Rahman

Rahman is a photographer, curator, designer, activist, and co-founder of SAHMAT, a Delhi-based collective of artists and scholars dedicated to promoting cultural pluralism and secularism in India. After studying physics and photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he went on to study graphic design at the Yale University School of Art. Working in both color and black-and-white, Rahman is known for his street photographs of India and his environmental portraits of artists and intellectuals. In this rebus-like portrait, Rahman’s close friend and mentor, the photographer Raghubir Singh, poses before a painter’s market stall in New Delhi. The image offers a clever gloss on the changing status of their shared métier, hinting that the photographer will supplant the “painter artist” as a creator of “new art.”

Contributions

Photography and Modern Indian Architecture (1949-1990s)

Ram Rahman (photographer, designer, curator and activist) discusses key examples of modernist architecture in post-colonial India. Using photographic documentation and archival materials, he surveys the landscape of architects, designers, photographers, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals working (primarily in New Delhi) between the 1950s and 1990s. This presentation is excerpted from a closed-door session with MoMA’s C-MAP Asia…