- Raihan Vadra is engaged to Aviva Baig, a photographer and co-founder of Atelier 11
- He began photography at age seven, inspired by his mother Priyanka Gandhi Vadra
- Raihan, 25, has chosen a creative career in photography and visual art
Raihan Vadra, the son of Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and businessman Robert Vadra, is engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Aviva Baig.
Baig is a photographer and the co-founder of Atelier 11, a photographic studio and production company. Her work has been exhibited across several platforms in India.
All About Raihan Vadra
Unlike many members of India's oldest political family, 25-year-old Raihan Rajiv Vadra has chosen a creative career in photography and visual art.
His journey as an artist began at an early age. He was seven when his mother, Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, first gave him a camera during family trips. Frequent safaris, where she also pursued wildlife photography, developed his interest in the medium, as per The Established.
As a child and later a student at boarding school, Raihan photographed wildlife and school events. He used point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders to record animals during trips to Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand and Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan.
In 2017, during his final year of school, Raihan was injured while playing cricket and lost vision in his left eye. The injury forced him to step away from photography for nearly two years due to strain on his right eye.
In 2019, Raihan enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he studied politics.
A year later, he returned to photography, initially taking up assignments to support himself while studying. During this phase, he rediscovered the medium with a changed visual perspective.
In July 2021, Raihan held his first solo exhibition, Dark Perception, at Bikaner House in New Delhi. The show explored how darkness can alter perception and allow creative freedom, drawing directly from his experience of vision loss. In December 2022, he followed this with the exhibition Anumana.
His third solo exhibition, Upamana, was held at Bikaner House in New Delhi in 2024. The exhibition explored the idea of comparison using installations, sound, light, and visual art, with themes of control, choice, memory, compulsion, and emotion. Upamana is part of a series of planned solo exhibitions based on the five ‘pramanas', or schools of logic, in Indian philosophy, which Raihan aims to complete over a decade.
Raihan reportedly follows artists such as Paul Cocksedge, Daniel Arsham, Sarah van Rij, Raghu Rai and Banksy.
Encouraged throughout by his mother, Raihan also draws inspiration from the photographic work of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, whose images he studies closely.
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