Does anyone know who this lady is?

The woman in the center of this photo has intrigued me for years. It’s not just her face. Look how relaxed her hands are. The photo was taken in 1948 or 1949 at Sri Ramana Maharshi’s ashram by Eliot Elisofon for Life Magazine. She is sitting front and center in a crowd of people. Most […]

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T. N. Krishnaswami

Dr. T. N. Krishnaswami, known as Dr. TNK, took most of the photos in Sri Ramanasramam’s archives. In the 1930s when he was a medical student he came from Madras with friends to visit Sri Ramanasramam for the first time. He brought a camera and took this picture: People at the ashram liked the photo […]

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Catalog of Ramana photos

Realization.org recently published a gallery with about 1500 photos of Ramana. Further reading Ramana photo gallery on Realization.org Article about the Sri Ramanasramam photo archive Photo by Eliot Elisofon

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P.R. Subramanian Iyer

P.R. Subramanian Iyer, known to friends as Mani and often identified as P.R.S. Mani, worked as a photographer for a movie studio in Tamil Nadu. He married the daughter of Ganapati Muni and died at 33. I think (but I’m not sure) that he is the man in the lower left corner of the photo […]

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

I hesitate to post Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous photos of Ramana because some people find them sad if not gruesome. But it must be done. If you feel sad when you look at them, maybe it will help to remember Ramana’s famous words to devotees just before he died: You say I am going away. But […]

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Gajanan Govind Welling

Anybody who has been interested in Ramana Maharshi for more than ten minutes has probably seen the next picture. It’s reproduced frequently on book covers and web sites. The photo’s popularity is completely understandable; it’s a wonderful picture. This photo and similar ones are sometimes called “the Welling busts.” They were taken in 1946 by […]

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Eliot Elisofon

Eliot Elisofon was the photographer who took the pictures for Life Magazine‘s long article about Ramana Maharshi that appeared in May, 1949. He was was one of the most famous and accomplished Western photographers of his day, with notable achievements in other fields as well. I’m old enough to remember Life Magazine in its heyday. […]

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Charlie’s Magic Camera

My friend Charlie — excuse me, my brother Charlie — often sends me pictures that he takes with a certain camera. Either Charlie has a strange talent or there is something unusual about this camera. Maybe both. Yesterday he sent this picture of a dead salmon. I wrote and said: “Okay, let’s face it, this […]

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My Two Days at Meenakshi Amman Temple

The first two posts on this blog pay homage to my guides and protectors, the Goddess and Sri Ramana Maharshi. No amount of thanks could ever be adequate. In a way my spiritual path began during the experience I’m about to describe although I wasn’t aware of until many years later. For a prequel to […]

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Ramana Maharshi and Meenakshi Amman Temple

The first two posts on this blog pay homage to my guides and protectors, the Goddess and Sri Ramana Maharshi. No amount of thanks could ever be adequate. The house where Ramana Maharshi lived as a teenager is about 300 feet from Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, India, as shown in this picture from Google Earth: […]

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