Photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri is a persistent man. The last time he began documenting public clocks in Mumbai, the project continued for over a quarter of a century. Though his obsession with these clocks is far from over, two years ago Chaudhuri quite accidentally embarked on a new pursuit. “I was approached for an anthology on the city, where the editor was looking for fresh voices,” he shares. “While this excited me, at that particular point, I didn’t have an idea I could develop.”
It was around this time that Chaudhuri, 53, began noticing the enormous transition Mumbai was undergoing — at the heart of this makeover were countless bridges, flyovers, and connectors springing up seemingly out of nowhere, creating an almost parallel world several feet above the ground. Despite having lived here all his life, this was a city that with each passing day was becoming more and more unrecognisable to him. “I knew I had to document this shift,” he says.
With hundreds of photographs of close to 21 bridges in progress and 14 under-construction Metro sites, Chaudhuri’s ongoing project, Bridges to a New City, captures both erosion and transition — from the Coastal Road that swallowed the seafront view of Haji Ali to the Thane Elevated Road, which has made its appearance in the form of thick pillars between roads, with the promise of cutting travel time to Mumbai to just 25 minutes.
