Madan Mahatta's architectural photographs
About this post
Madan Mahatta's photographs of 36 architectural models belong to a period when India was giving physical form to the ambitions of a newly independent nation. From the 1950s through the 1980s, new universities, research centres, government offices, housing and cultural institutions were being planned across the country. Architects experimented with new materials, technologies and forms, while models became an important means of developing and presenting ideas before construction.
Born in Srinagar in 1932, Mahatta came from the Mahatta family of photographers and studied photography at the Guildford School of Art and Crafts in England. Returning to India in 1954, he worked from the family's New Delhi studio, Mahatta & Co., developing a practice spanning commercial, industrial, architectural and documentary photography.
From the 1950s onwards, Mahatta photographed architects including Habib Rahman, Achyut P. Kanvinde, Joseph Allen Stein, Charles Correa, Raj Rewal, Kuldip Singh, Ram Sharma, Ranjit Sabhiki and Jasbir Sawhney. Their work reflects the changing vocabulary of post-Independence Indian architecture, from International Modernism and functionalism to Brutalism, Structural Expressionism and Critical Regionalism.
The 36 models bring this architectural imagination into focus, revealing how architects explored massing, structure, circulation, geometry, landscape and the relationship between building and city. Alongside his photographs of completed buildings, Mahatta's model photography preserves architecture at the stage of conception, when ideas were still being tested and given form.
Born in Srinagar in 1932, Mahatta came from the Mahatta family of photographers and studied photography at the Guildford School of Art and Crafts in England. Returning to India in 1954, he worked from the family's New Delhi studio, Mahatta & Co., developing a practice spanning commercial, industrial, architectural and documentary photography.
From the 1950s onwards, Mahatta photographed architects including Habib Rahman, Achyut P. Kanvinde, Joseph Allen Stein, Charles Correa, Raj Rewal, Kuldip Singh, Ram Sharma, Ranjit Sabhiki and Jasbir Sawhney. Their work reflects the changing vocabulary of post-Independence Indian architecture, from International Modernism and functionalism to Brutalism, Structural Expressionism and Critical Regionalism.
The 36 models bring this architectural imagination into focus, revealing how architects explored massing, structure, circulation, geometry, landscape and the relationship between building and city. Alongside his photographs of completed buildings, Mahatta's model photography preserves architecture at the stage of conception, when ideas were still being tested and given form.
Post 41
Madan Mahatta's architectural photographs
Post record