Picture Mumbai

In November 1995, Bombay's name was officially to Mumbai. The local colour of India's most cosmopolitan city, Mumbai, derives from the mix of its inhabitants. The different lifestyles and languages, creeds, customs, and cuisines of the Maharashtrians, Gujaratis, Parsis, Goans, Kannadis, and Tamils who call this city home make for a specially variegated social mosaic. The population spills out from open coastlines and obscure alleyways onto the crowded streets lined with colonial monuments and sleek skyscrapers, creating an intense human element that is distinctly Mumbai. But in this tangle of traditions old and new, what constitutes a landmark?

To get a fresh perspective, the Getty Conservation Institute asked nine youths aged twelve to eighteen to photograph what in their views qualified as landmarks of their personal lives and neighbourhoods. Following the success of similar initiatives in Los Angeles and Cape Town, the youths have produced a visual narrative that captures significant markers across the city. This is a powerful, honest, profound, and witty commentary on the small and the monumental, the intricate, the plain, the sad, the strange, the funny, the enduring, and the transitory in a dynamic urban setting today.

More than a book of photographs, Picture Mumbai: Landmarks of a New Generation challenges us to reflect on how we ourselves are marked by, and interpret, the environment in which we live.