Sometimes, a single photograph can articulate the aspirations of a historical moment. In Madan Mahatta’s A.P. Kanvinde at home (1996), architect Achyut Kanvinde reads in a sparsely furnished living room – all cool, clean lines and mid-century furniture. It’s the epitome of contemporary life, and a template for the modern Indian subject. Born in 1932, Mahatta trained at the Guildford School of Arts and Crafts in the UK, before returning to India in 1954 to work at the family-owned studio Mahatta & Co. He began his practice at a time when the young nation was fashioning for itself a new identity, and his ‘Delhi Architecture Series’ (1950s-80s) documents the architectural pursuits of the nation-building project. Mahatta’s archive is full of such images of aspiration, composed not only with attention to formal detail, but suffused with deference to the ideology of the Indian nation-state. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a keen modernist, brought with him a secular vision for the country, and the idea of India thus began its long struggle to reconcile itself with that of the modern subject.
Mahatta hunted for flat, even light. He approached buildings as he did the subjects of portraiture, waiting for the sun to dispense itself in a way that suited the frame best. He remained committed to projects that often took decades to complete. The city we now know as New Delhi was raised from the open land that surrounded Edwin Lutyen’s old colonial capital, an urbanization project that took shape between the 1950s to the mid-1980s. Mahatta photographed the New Delhi Municipal Corporation, the Hindustan Times Building, the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Joseph Allen Stein-designed interiors of the Escorts factory, to name a few. In a single frame, Mahatta was able to pull together several textures of concrete and latticework that are visible on the facades of these projects. He also photographed the maquettes of early proposals in his studio, a few of which were never realized, all set against swirling hand-painted backdrops of pink and powder blue.
The Nehruvian Nation Building project, some argue, was an example of contemporary Indian leadership the likes of which India is yet to see again. For others, it was an idea of India riddled with contradiction and only available to those with access to power. Although an independent photographer, Mahatta’s process required a close relationship with a rakish boys’ club of architects that Nehru had gathered from across the country, some of whom were sent to MIT or Harvard on state funding.
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