“A connoisseur of intimacy”

"I won’t speak about the book…my work will speak for itself,” said filmmaker, photographer and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala at the launch of her volume of black and white photographs, Home in the City, Bombay 1977 – Mumbai 2017 at Shireen Gandhy’s Gallery Chemould Prescott on October 13, 2017. The brief launch coincided with an exhibition of about 100 select images from her book.
The second exhibition of her photographs at the Gallery after "Parsis, a photographic journey” in 2013, those gathered at the launch included, besides friends and family of the Padma Shri awardee, some of the people who featured in her book – from stage and film actor Gerson da Cunha to "everyday kind of people.” Taraporevala called the book release "an embarrassment of riches… to have my friends who featured in the book around me.” She referred to having Harper Collins as the publishers was like "riding in a Rolls Royce” as compared to her earlier work of photographs that was self published. Thanking "the people of my city who provide me with so much inspiration,” the photographer went on to thank "whoever invented digital photography.” Gallerist Gandhy, while welcoming the audience had thanked Taraporevala for "tolerating my non-aesthetic eye.”
In collaboration with Goan art gallery Sunaparanta, the exhibition moved to the sea-side state from November 14 onwards and later to Delhi where it was on view till January 27, 2018. A yearlong exhibit at The Whitworth, in the University of Manchester, in UK closed on February 28.

Sooni Taraporevala

Shireen Gandhy addressing audience at the launch of the photographer’s portfolio Photo courtesy: Chemould Prescott Road

An alcove at Chemould displayed about 20 Parsi themed photographs which are interspersed throughout the book: from a young industrialist Adi Godrej, to the photographer’s father Rumi, images from a dog show, to a lonesome Parsi witnessing the demolition of an iconic building near Kemps Corner. A large panorama of the city, glimpses from parties hosted by a city newspaper, street urchins, roadside typists, women bikers and stills shot by Taraporevala during the filming of The Perfect Murder in 1988: all "recall her tryst with and trajectory within this city of chaos and calm which she calls home,” as The Hindu (TH) reported on October 14, 2017.
Writing the foreword to the volume, British-Indian writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie noted, "This is the city as one sharp eye has seen it, and I’m happy to have Sooni’s eyes as my guide.” According to British born American essayist Pico Iyer, "you soon see when you meet the photos here that Taraporevala is a connoisseur of intimacy.”
The write-up accompanying the book release called the photographs "complex and intimate, quirky and quotidian as they celebrate the odd and the everyday.” In an interview with TH, Taraporevala said about the four decades of work represented in the book that "the reason you’re not able to make out which is contemporary and which is past is because I don’t think my style has changed.” Calling herself "pretty boring that way,” the photographer said that she was "sort of shooting the same way” as she did 40 years ago.
Taraporevala’s photographs have been displayed at Tate Modern’s "Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis” (London, 2001); Lille 3000 (France, 2006); Photoquai, Musee de Quai Branley (Paris, 2009). Locations of solo shows include Sert Gallery in Harvard University in 2012 and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi in 2013, which also holds some of her photographs in their permanent collection.