City chroniclers will appreciate this catalogue of postcards and prints of early Bombay
Panorama of Fort, Bombay (coloured). Jamshyd and Pheroza Godrej Collection. Photomechanical print on postcard. Pics/Ashish Raje
There are books that celebrate our home city and its glorious, multi-layered histories, and then there is visual documentation that often doubles up as stunning, almost lyrical love letters that are picked up by Bombayphiles such as us, at the drop of a hat. Changing Perspectives of Bombay: From Early Printmaking to Early Photography is one such unputdownable find that we stumbled upon while on a recent visit to the newly-opened Mumbai Gallery at Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly, the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India).
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Interior of the Caves of Elephanta by Sir Harry Francis Colville Darell. Coloured lithograph
Flipping through the pages of this catalogue (though it is more of a coffee table book) that was birthed from an exhibition by the same name, and currently on display at the Prints and Drawings Gallery at CSMVS, emerges as an unabashed love affair with the city’s past. If poring over the visual history of undivided India’s urban centres entices you, this is gold. Curated by eminent arts historian Dr Pheroza J Godrej, this assemblage of 50 postcards and prints of early Bombay offers a rare glimpse into the life and times, as well as the corners and contours of the early city’s urban evolution, its charming streetscapes that are filled with the same diversity for which it continues to be hailed as a melting pot of culture and thought. From invaluable snapshots of different communities residing in old Bombay, photographed in traditional attire to vista views of the Fort, Apollo Bunder, the Parsee Tower of Silence as well as the Plague of 1896, it is a keepsake for those who track the city’s heritage, and more importantly, serves as a chronicle to cherish and also learn from the city’s rich, illustrious past.
Parsee Ladies; (right) Mahratta Women. Jamshyd and Pheroza Godrej Collection. Photomechanical prints on postcards
Oh, and yes, we learnt that the official name for postcard collecting is Deltiology.
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