As India’s cities have transformed into chaotic, ungainly urban sprawls, scores of its heritage buildings have been torn down to make way for the new.

Last year, marked the loss of Bengaluru’s 100-year-old Krumbiegel Hall, while, in Kolkata, numerous old homes have disappeared, with modern, glass-and-steel structures taking their place. Across the country, many of the historic structures that do remain standing are in a terrible state, neglected by local authorities despite the pleas and protests of activists and conservation organisations.

It’s a situation that British photographer Derry Moore anticipated when he first came to India in the 1970s. Over the next two decades, during his travels to cities such as Calcutta (now Kolkata), Lucknow, Bombay (now Mumbai) and Hyderabad, Moore tried to photograph the colonial-era buildings whose days, he already knew, were numbered.

Beginning on Jan. 20, the gallery Tasveer, in partnership with the digital art platform Dauble, will be exhibiting 28 of Moore’s photographs of India in Bengaluru.

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