A moment in time

Monica Arora

A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second,” wrote Salman Rushdie in his book The Ground Beneath Her Feet. There is this innate intimacy about photographs, particularly the black and white ones, which, like poetry, capture that one moment which no one knew even occurred, except for the photographer’s keen eye, his or vision and ability to see it as a potentially potent frame.

Mumbai-based Parsi photographer Sooni Taraporevala’s latest exhibition, Home in the City: Bombay 1977 to Mumbai 2017, has been curated by author and art aficionado Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi. Supported by the founders of Sunaparanta — Goa Center for the Arts, Dipti and Dattaraj Salgaocar, the travelling exhibition recently came to Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi.

Home in the City features an extensive collection of Sooni’s black and white images of the metropolis Mumbai from 1977 to now. She attributes the show to her friend and Photoink’s founder-director Devika Daulet Singh, who actually facilitated the process of digging into her archives and finding out these timeless gems. Later, Sooni and Siddharth sat down to revisit the larger draft of the exhibition, all united by the sense of nostalgia for a city that had come to pass. 

Maria Balshaw, director of the Tate, commissioned the show when she was director of the Whitworth Art Gallery, the UK, where the show is ongoing. Salman Rushdie and Pico Iyer provided beautiful essays for the book published exquisitely by HarperCollins to mark the show. Of the 102 images curated by Siddharth, some 80 have been shot on film. The rest are all from her digital collection.

The exhibition is a chronicle of contemporary history of the transformation of a metropolis. Mention about Bombay’s transition to Mumbai and Sooni says the city has been stretched at its seams owing to the mindless construction of high rises standing tall amidst the flyovers, the dwindling verdant patches and the milling milieu of the ever ascending population.

For Siddharth, the change is a political one. “We went from being liberal to conservative, which mirrors the state of things now. The city lost its sense of humour and grew ugly, conversation failed, intellectual and cultural mediocrity became a default operative mode. Perhaps this is true of India as a whole. Remember that the city’s name change was not done by vote but political coercion and the belief that the identity of an entire people relied on a forcible name change. People’s identities are not defined by such superficial changes. They are defined by how politics empowers people, governs transparently, and ensures peace and order — none of which either present or past government has been able to do.”

No wonder then that the perceptive Bombay by Night 1977 featuring the stunning Marine Drive flanking the Arabian Sea is almost a celebration of the city. In sharp contrast is Mumbai by Night 2016 — a more personalised and grim view of today’s Mumbai seen through a window. Sooni’s photographs depict rare sights like horses at Charmi Road or a camel on Marine Drive back in 1977, set against an uncluttered and breezy Mumbai.

Interestingly, the photographs are not just about the city or its dynamics but also its men, women and children, common people thronging the streets and nooks and crannies of Mumbai, who impart it its indefatigable spirit. From the premiere of the film Jaanbaaz released in 1986, there are images of star-struck fans flanking the dapper Feroze Khan and the iconic showman Raj Kapoor. A very rare shot of MF Husain at his abode is also one of the rare images in the handpicked collection. It is moments like these that make these photographs so warm and yet so sweeping in their range.