Journey Through 40 Years Of Bombay With Sooni Taraporevala’s ‘Home In The City’

Text by Huzan Tata. Photographs courtesy of Sooni Taraporevala/Chemould Prescott Road

The multi-faceted photographer’s frames will take you through a Bombay bygone

Click on any image to view in larger gallery

Hear the word ‘Bombay’, and anyone who’s lived in or known the metropolis can conjure up a thousand images that are reminiscent of the island city. And so it is with photographer, screenwriter and film-maker Sooni Taraporevala. A photographer since the early ’70s who’s been greatly influenced by the frames of Raghubir Singh, Taraporevala has made the city her muse since she picked up a camera. At a new exhibition curated by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi in the financial capital, photos of her hometown will let viewers in on Mumbai through her lens. The black-and-white images of then-Bombay are evocative of the city’s character, capturing emotions and moments of the people — and the city they inhabit — with every frame telling a unique story. From the everyday to the extraordinary, the mundane to the magical, and the odd but never unimaginable (as anything is possible in the city of dreams), Taraporevala’s photographs cover forty years of a city in its everyday glory.

An accompanying book, Home In The City, Bombay 1977 – Mumbai 2017, published by HarperCollins India released on the day of the exhibition launch, features delightful essays by Pico Iyer and Salman Rushdie, and an interaction between Taraporevala and Shangvi on the making of her photos and the exhibition. If you’ve ever lived in or loved Bombay (or Mumbai, as it’s known today), Taraporevala’s frames will remind you why.

Home In The City, Bombay 1977 – Mumbai 2017 is on display at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (Queens Mansion 3rd Floor, G.Talwatkar Marg, Fort) from October 14 – 31, 2017