A Taxi Driver, Calcutta, West Bengal

Born into an aristocratic family in Jaipur, Singh lived and worked in Paris, London, and New York, but his lifelong subject as a photographer was the vibrant culture and landscape of modern India. With its emphasis on visual surprise and spontaneity, Singh's work belongs to the tradition of small-format street photography pioneered by such artists as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. Unlike many of his European counterparts, however, Singh worked exclusively in color, often composing his images with a graphic complexity akin to that of Mughal miniatures. Singh's prolific career was cut short when he died in 1999 at the age of fifty-eight.