Rajan Devadas, one of the most admired Indian-American photojournalists whose lenses chronicled U.S.-India relations for more than half-a-century, died of cardiac arrest at the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington on Friday. He is survived by his wife and eight children. He was 93.
In a career spanning more than five decades, Devadas, a Padma Shri awardee, has covered the U.S. visit of every Indian Prime Minister — from Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh — besides photographing every U.S. President — from John F Kennedy to George W Bush. He could not cover Narendra Modi’s visit in September.
For several decades, he worked as an official photographer of the Indian Embassy in Washington.
In 2002, the Padma Shri was bestowed on him. Devadas, who was born in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala in 1921, spent much of his childhood in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, and studied at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU).
After working as an administrative assistant at the BHU, he came to the U.S. in 1955.
