In his 3-decade career Chirodeep Chaudhuri has worn many hats – starting out in advertising as a visualiser, then switching careers as a photojournalist and later an Editor of Photography.
He is the author of the critically feted book ‘A Village In Bengal: Photographs and an Essay’, a result of his 13-year long engagement with his ancestral village in West Bengal and his family’s nearly two century old tradition of the Durga Puja. He is also the co-author of the book ‘With Great Truth & Regards: The History of the Typewriter in India’. He was, till recently, heading the Design and Photography departments of the international arts and culture magazine Time Out’s three India editions and the Editor of Photography of National Geographic Traveler (India).
Chirodeep’s work documents the urban landscape and he has often been referred to as the “chronicler of Bombay”. During his career he has produced diverse documents of his home city in a range of projects like ‘Seeing Time: Public Clocks of Bombay’, ‘The One-Rupee Entrepreneur’, ‘The Commuters’ and ‘In the city, a library’ among others. His work has also been featured in important publications about his home city like ‘Bombay: The Cities Within’, ‘Fort Walks’, ‘Anchoring a City Line’, ‘Bombay Then: Mumbai Now’ and ‘Bombay, Meri Jaan’ to name a few.
As an artist, he is represented by the Mumbai based gallery, Project 88 and his work is part of the collection of the Museum of Photographic Arts (Houston, USA), the Peabody Essex Museum (Massachusetts; USA) and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan) and private collections in India. Chirodeep lives in Bombay and divides his time between his various teaching assignments and photographing subjects as diverse as café sitters, airport smoking rooms and abandoned helmets.
One of those monsoon afternoons
when the Arabian Sea is at it’s
roughest and the winds are gusty
and the skies are an ominous grey
presented an opportunity for this
young man to enthusiastically
practice his dangerous stunt
of leaping into the sea. Around
the Gateway of India. Mumbai; Maharashtra. 1995.The peachseller. Near
Crawford Market;
Mumbai. 1997The durbeenwallahs are a common sight around the Gateway of India, one of Mumbai’s most
popular tourist sites. Tourists usually like to take in the views of the naval ships docked in the
distance and the lighthouses. Around the Gateway of India. Mumbai; Maharashtra. 1991Painted wall mural. Carnac Bundar; Mumbai. 2022 A customer and her child waits inside one of the makeshift photo studios that come up at the time of the annual Mahim Fair. The studios are equipped with painted forest backdrops, cutouts of film stars and aeroplanes and motorbikes. Mumbai. 2005The city skyline as seen from across the bay
at Mahim during a monsoon shower. Bandra
Reclamation; Mumbai. 2022Afternoon coffee at the
Sea lounge in the Taj
Mahal Hotel & Palace.
Colaba; Mumbai. 2014The grand staircase of the iconic Taj Mahal Hotel & Palace often turns into a backdrop for wedding portraits. The staircase from which,
in 1947, Mountbatten had made the announcement for India’s independence was a location for gun battles during the 26/11 terror
attacks of 2008 and was vastly damaged. It was later rebuilt like most of the hotel’s interiors. Colaba; Mumbai. 2022.For a city by
the sea the
salt pans are
its buffer zone.
The salt pans
that stretch
for many
kilometers
along the
Eastern side
also happen
to be prime
real-estate
and are,
these days,
in the crosshairs
of the
land sharks.
Wadala;
Mumbai. 2022Flooding and waterlogging, that annual feature of monsoons.
People, in general, continue living their lives adapting to the
hardships that accompany the rains. Parel; Mumbai. 2006Sunday
morning shave.
Barbers, here, have a
busy day on Sundays
when the markets are
closed and porters
and labourers can
indulge themselves
in some self-care.
Around Jama Masjid;
Mumbai. 2004.Swimming in the
Ganga. Varanasi; Uttar
Pradesh. 2013Marine Drive; Mumbai. 1998Jockeys and their
horses on a winter morning
at the Royal Western India
Turf Club at Mahalaxmi.
There are no winters as
such in Mumbai just the
occasional fog in some
places. At the race course,
the dust from the hooves of
the horses that were out for
their exercises mixed that
winter morning. Mahalaxmi;
Mumbai. 1994Weaving a dhurrie at the City Palace; Jaipur; Rajasthan. 2005It might look beautiful and painting-like but riding on the city’s potholed roads
during the monsoon is an ordeal. Lives are being lost. Thane. 2021Shops selling and manufacturing musical instruments like this hole-in-the wall shop mark the stretch near Lal Bazaar, the Police HQs in Kolkata. 2007Trams are disappearing from Kolkata. The tracks had survived for some years even after the trams stopped running on
this route. The tracks and the cobblestones have now disappeared from this stretch of road. Strand Road; Kolkata. 1994A ritual known as the Kola Bou Chaan during the annual
Bengali festival of Durga Puja. A first rituals marking festivities
and has the priests worshiping a banana plant, considered to
be the wife of Ganesha. Amadpur; West Bengal. 1994In the near
future, the hand-pilled
rickshaws may be
gone from Kolkata’s
streets. Though, they
may survive longer
than the trams. And
then, with it will be
gone the gentle
tinkling sound of the
bell that the pullers
carry. It’s a sound that
is intrinsically linked
to the city. Along the
Hoogly; Kolkata. 2005A child, handed
over by its parents,
is blessed by a
Theyyam dancer.
Kannur district;
Kerala. 2018Little Rann of Kutch; Gujarat. 1997Foreign
tourists pose in
front of the Taj
Mahal, India’s
most visited
tourist site. Tourist
photographers,
these days,
complain about the
drop in business
due to the invasion
of mobile phone
cameras. Agra.
1999A young priest, among a crowd of priests waits for
devotees outside the Lingaraj Temple; Bhubaneshwar;
Odisha. 2008
