It's pretty clear that Robert D. Stephens loves South Mumbai. For his lengthily-named Mumbai Articles: Contemporary Aerial Photographs of Mumbai, Stephens ascends into the skies via various airplane rides, to capture South Mumbai from Apollo Bunder to Dadar.
"I currently live in Bandra, but I am and always will be a towny at heart. From 2007 - 2008 I stayed as a paying guest with a gentle Parsi man in Tardeo and then with a Maharashtrian family at Haji Ali. Then, for four years I lived in a 225 sq ft apartment at MP Mills SRA Scheme in Tardeo. Perhaps because 1/6th of my life has been spent in South Mumbai, my heart gravitates in that direction when I have the privilege of being up in the air," he says.
Stephens' pictures offer black-and-white juxtapositions of cluttered, saturated cityscapes with misty swathes, viewed through thick plane window glass. The effect is a gritty, swirly layer over the pictures, which he dismisses as "looking through a pair of spectacles. The additional layer may irritate for a few seconds, but the world outside is so much more interesting that one quickly looks beyond."
The flâneur in Stephens also found earthier inspiration by the footpath book stalls of Flora Fountain. "Like a book vulture, I can be found swarming to see if there are any new carcasses of out-of-print books related to Mumbai.
Last week I found the Bombay Land Revenue Act of 1914. A few months previously I discovered a bound copy of the Report on the Development Plan for Greater Bombay, 1964. There is a map in the Development Plan of 1964 which shows the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. That's right, 1964, 50 years ago. Since seeing that map, I never looked at the Sea Link the same again." All the books he has unearthed will be available at the exhibition, to give a tactile sense of Mumbai's histories past. Along with a small, hand-sewn catalogue of his photographs.
Mumbai Articles: Contemporary Aerial Photographs of Mumbai is at ARTISANS', Kala Ghoda, 13-19 November 2014, 11am-7pm
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