Bialobrzeski’s fascination with Mumbai’s suburbs began in 1987, when he first visited the city and saw its “contrast, the poverty, and the energy.” Unlike other photographers who were charmed by the historic appeal of South Mumbai, Bialobrzeski was captivated by the suburbs, where “everything is really happening and you can feel the change around you.”
He returned to some of those neighbourhoods in October-December 2017, during an art residency at the Goethe Institut-Max Mueller Bhavan. In Bandra, Andheri, Goregaon, Juhu, Vikhroli, and Malad, he photographed the contradictions in the landscape—from the sprawl of shanties to the construction of high-rises. Their disorder was a far cry from the leafy, quiet suburbs of Hamburg, where he lives. Twenty-five of those photographs are currently on display in the institute at a solo exhibition titled Mumbai Suburbia: Urban Environment in Crisis. [...]
In an accompanying note to the exhibition, architect and urban planner Rahul Mehrotra writes: “With globalisation and the emergence of a post-industrial service-based economy in Mumbai, as in several other cities in India, urban space has been fragmented and polarised with the rich and poor jostling for access to amenities. Further, the state has more or less given up the responsibility of projecting an image of the city leaving this to be constructed on ad hoc basis by the market.”
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