Rajan Devadas Biography 
Rajan Devadas was an internationally acclaimed photographer and photojournalist from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He is best known for Documenting India-US relations for 5 decades, and was the first accredited White House photographer of Indian origin. He is reported to have photographed all the US Presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush. For his contributions towards the field of Indian journalism and photography, government of India honoured him with Padma Shri in 2002. He also photographed many world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Pope John Paul, Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa etc, and his photographs were frequently featured in almost all leading newspapers and publications of India. He passed away in 2014 in Rockville, Maryland, USA.
Rajan Devadas was born in 1921 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Following the death of his father he shifted his base to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. He grew up in the holy city where he completed his graduation and studied at the Banares Hindu University. After studies he worked in the same university as an administrative assistant. During his college days, he got involved with freedom struggle movement and also politics, and was a member of Indian National Congress.
He secured a scholarship in 1954 to study at the Pendle Hill Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation, and reached New York in 1955. Once he completed the course, he joined the University of Pennsylvania and later studied journalism and public relations in New School for Social Research, New York. It was during this time he developed a passion for photography and later joined the Indian Embassy in Washington as the official photographer. For more than 50 decades, he documented India-US relations through his photographers.
Published: January 10, 2019
Updated: January 10, 2019
