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Dive into the spirit of Mumbai's literary cults with this photo essay
Updated On: 27 August, 2023 07:00 AM IST | Mumbai | Sucheta Chakraborty
A bibliophile and photographer’s visual essay, born out of a photography fellowship, explores Mumbai’s love for literature
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A gentleman reads at Chor Bazaar; (right) A lady browses at the Marathi Granth Sangrahalaya in Dadar, the oldest Marathi language library of India
I think my most favourite photograph of the series is of an old gentleman reading a book at Chor Bazaar,” Rachna Chopra, winner of the Tata Literature Live! 2022 Photography Fellowship, tells us. Chor Bazaar, also known as “Shor” Bazaar, which she got to explore around the time she took the photo, is a place where “books, written letters, old postcards and filled journals and diaries, vintage typewriters and readers were not hard to find. It just speaks of how imbibed and intrinsic literature and the power of books and the written word has been and continues to be, in our beloved city, Mumbai, in all its glory and bewilderment.”
This photograph forms a part of a photo essay titled “Literature Lovers of Mumbai” that Chopra, as the recipient of the fellowship, pursued under the guidance of theatre practitioner, photographer, and publisher Naveen Kishore, who was also part of the jury that selected Chopra. Four finalists out of over 150 initial participants were invited to capture the essence of the 2022 edition of the festival through their lenses. Chopra recalls attending all three days of the festival held at the NCPA and the Title Waves bookstore in Bandra and speaking to people about what literature meant to them, how it helped them escape to a different world, and how the festival helped them widen their minds and meet their favourite authors. “I tried to bring the conversations I had with people into the essay,” she says. Kishore, she recalls, was impressed with the fact that her photos went beyond literal captures from the festival to reflect on what it meant to the city and its residents. “I took pictures at Marine Drive too since people were sitting and reading there as well,” she points out.
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