A Too-Perfect Picture – The New York Times

A Too-Perfect Picture

How can we tell when a photograph is giving us the truth about a place and not simply trafficking in fantasy?

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/magazine/a-too-perfect-picture.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

What a relief it is to move from Steve McCurry’s work to that of someone like Raghubir Singh. Singh worked from the late ’60s until his untimely death in 1999, traveling all over India to create a series of powerful books about his homeland. His work shares formal content with McCurry’s: the subcontinental terrain, the eye-popping color, the human presence. Within these shared parameters, however, Singh gives us photographs charged with life: not only beautiful experiences or painful scenes but also those in-between moments of drift that make up most of our days.