How often have people proclaimed that Mumbai never sleeps?! The constant motion of vehicles and people whizzing past creates a visual of lights and colours. Amidst this display is nestled a subdued, yet engaging graphical interplay of lines and shadows cast by the Mumbai metro.
Predominantly guided by functionality, the structure has an industrial quality. Squint your eyes and the vertical poles, railings, the criss-crossing trusses and the horizontal tread lines, together with the changing sunlight, emit a layer of orthogonal shadows.
The streamlined metro periodically swishes through a steel cage and emerges onto the platform, breaking the ethereal glow within, where humans too appear as mere shadows.
This curved, distorted shadow of human life on robust grey elements heightens the drama between animate and inanimate objects. Suspended above the vibrant city, the sombre metro continues to make its presence felt.
From below, the bridge, its linear electric poles and dangling wires is a graphic of black lines of varying intensity. And when you look down from the metro station, the city is captured as a geometric abstraction in shades of grey and teal.
Text By Vishanka Gandhi
Photographs Ira Gosalia | Photographix
Contact
email: ira.gosalia@gmail.com
