“Born in 1932, in Srinagar, Kashmir, Madan Mahatta (Mehta) studied photography in England in the 1950s at the Guildford School of Arts & Crafts. On his return to India in 1954, he joined the family photo studio, Mahatta & Co., in Connaught Place. He is believed to have introduced the negative to positive colour printing technique in India, a skill he learnt during his time at the photography school in England. Mahatta’s work includes portraiture, dance, theatre, and industrial and architectural photography, with the latter being the defining feature of his career. The budding modernism of the post-colonial India during the Nehruvian period was captured brilliantly by Mahatta, shot almost exclusively in black and white on medium-format monochromatic film from the 1950s to the 1980s.
One of the highlights of his work can be seen in his collaborations with the architects such as Achyut Kanwinde, Ajoy Choudhury, Charles Corea, Habib Rehman, Jasbir Sawhney, J.K. Choudhury, Joseph Allen Stein, Kuldip Singh, Raj Rewal, Ram Sharma, Ranjit Sabhiki and Shiv Nath Prasad. His close associations with these architects aided him in studying the buildings carefully creating images that conveyed the intention of the architect.
Often shot diagonally and with inclusion of foreground details, the images showcased a spatial depth that was accentuated with the lack of human intervention in any of his photographs. The emptiness of buildings swells to magnify their monumentality and bold geometric forms are cast in an even flat light highlighting the interplay between
surface and light.
Documenting the frenzy and euphoria of a budding nation, where the focus was to create institutions for arts, sciences, history as well as educational and government complexes, Mahatta captured the construction of Delhi Development Authority (DDA) Housing Project, Asian Games Village, IIT Delhi Campus, Sapru House, India International Centre, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) Building, Parliament annexe, Hall of Nation, Pragati Maidan and others, presenting a rare archive of the budding modernity in Nehruvian modernism.”