BHUPENDRA KARIA

POPULATION CRISIS, BOMBAY

BHUPENDRA KARIA

Fig. 1. Bhupendra Karia, Population Crisis, B.88.70 Bombay, 1970’s Courtesy © Bhupendra Karia Estate and sepiaEYE

Fig. 2. Bhupendra Karia, Population Crisis, B.96.70 Bombay, 1970’s Courtesy © Bhupendra Karia Estate and sepiaEYE

Fig. 3. Bhupendra Karia, Population Crisis, B.96.70 Bombay, 1970’s Courtesy © Bhupendra Karia Estate and sepiaEYE

Indian-born American photographer Bhupendra Karia’s Bombay street photographs visualise the challenges faced by the newly formed Indian Republic in a strikingly graphic yet lyrical idiom of black-and-white photography. Picturing India’s burgeoning population crisis from vertiginous vantage points and unexpected, skewed angles—Karia’s images reflect the urgent need to innovate. Karia’s neorealist street imaginaries, depicting the chaos of Mumbai’s streets, present new opportunities and dilemmas of the ‘common man’ or ‘aam aadmi’ in Bombay postcolonial city.

The photographs in this curated selection belong within the larger collaborative project Population Crisis between the International Centre for Photography (in New York City) and Cornell University’s International Population Program which surveyed global population trends. Created in 1970, this series of images from Mumbai’s streets draws attention to the population crisis facing the new Indian nation twenty-odd years into its independence. The country gained Independence from Britain in August 1947; at which point, the British authorities leaving in haste, departed without any civic or urban infrastructure planning in place.

Starkly cropped, Karia’s images bring into focus the undeniable poverty of bare feet and street litter and the close coexistence between humans and animals on Bombay’s busy streets. These aerial, panoramic views are cinematic translations that reveal mundane details unique to street life in transition, exemplified by the popular Calico towels, arranged in bulging reams balancing perilously on the heads of porters who transport them nimbly across Bombay (Fig. 1) or the horse-cart threading its way precariously through the thronging crowds. These graphic monochromatic compositions share a kindred spirit with Indian neorealist cinema pioneered by the Indian filmmaker Satyajit’s Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) and Apu Trilogy (1956-59). These films were pivotal to the emergence of an indigenous cinematic idiom expressing the stark poverty of many Indian citizens. However, Karia’s inherent optimism and innovation are affirmed in these unexpected views, which pan the depths of the crowded streets, branching out into the open skies. Karia visualises a modern India framed cinematically through its challenges and triumphs.

As a photographer with global influence, Karia’s legacy lives on through the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City, an institution which he established with his mentor and friend, the noted photographer Cornell Capa. Karia held various positions at the ICP including Curator, Director of Special Projects, and Associate Director. His creative output was prodigious; he published more than 15 exhibition catalogues and curated around 45 shows prior to his untimely death in 1996.

Karia’s arts education was equally varied. He trained in fine art at the Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy School of Fine Arts in Mumbai, and read history, art and aesthetics at the Tokyo University of Fine Art, where his interests and expertise in photography were cultivated. His keen awareness of the Japanese model of modernism, including his introduction to ukiyo-e woodblock prints from the modernising Edo period, had implications for his developing photographic practice, particularly in the context of Indian modernism which was also afflicted by questions of tradition.

On his return to India and following a stint in the mid-1960s as an academic at the Fine Arts faculty at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, Karia decided to travel across the country, using his camera to document Indian indigenous craft traditions as well as architectural typologies and their ornamentation. Covering almost 80,000 kilometres across rural India, Karia professes a deep love for the Indian countryside in this eloquent statement: “[India] is not without great beauty and tenderness – a pensive wistful, wildflower kind of beauty, accidentally encountered in the most unsuspected situations. There is a recondite part of being Indian, the attachment to Indian landscape.”

His photographs are held in international institutions, notably the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi alongside various private collections across the world.