Robert D. Stephens is a Principal at RMA Architects, Mumbai. His passions include the art of building and constructing beauty through visual, literary, and cinematic imagery. In 2013 he co-produced a feature film with India's first You Tube star, Wilbur Sargunaraj, entitled "Simple Superstar".
The most unique feature of the photos is that they come with an index of the pollution levels in the city on the day that each picture was shot.
For this particular photo taken on April 2015below were the details of the pollution level:
SO2 - 16 ug / m3
NO2 - 21 ug / m3
RSPM - 89 ug / m3
"At the end of the eighteenth century, when the country was beginning to settle down and before railways were projected, the EastIndia Company spent some thought and money upon the making of canals. As early as 1802 the waterway to the north was opened and much used. In more recent times a great deal of the material that was once carried thus has been diverted to the railway; but bulky country products such as firewood, palm leaves, coconut fibre, and bamboos are still transported by the leisurely barge that is towed and punted between the high banks of the canals and over the glassy water of the Cooum. Appearances arenowhere more deceptive than in the East. The canal looks like an ideal stream for the house-boat, but it is hot and stifling. The sea-breeze sweeps over its high banks, rustling through the trees with a sound that is suggestive of coolness and shade without touching the surface of the still water below; and the mosquito is the only creature that feels thoroughly happy in the muggy heat."
On the Coromandel Coast
Page 76
Mrs. F.E. Penny
1908
About Madras Transit
After the mesmerising aerial photos of Mumbai in "Mumbai Articles", Robert D Stephens turns his bird's eye view on Chennai in his latest collection "Madras Transit".
Click links below to see his other collections:
Mumbai Articles Mumbai NorthThis urban metropolis has had many admirers-from Lady Callcott, an English travel writer who spent considerable time in India, ("I do not know anything more striking than the first approach to Madras..."), to the Indian writer and cartographer, S Muthiah, famous for his political and historical writings on the "city that is still open to the skies, a city that in some ways seems a rural town that has just kept spreading."
Stephen's homage to Chennai, one of the top 52 must-see places to feature in The New York Times, includes 24 aerial photographs in colour. From the geometric street grids of Anna Nagar, to the banks of the Adyar River and beyond, each image is accompanied by a record of air pollution levels on the corresponding day, as measured by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.
Our one-of-a-kind collection is a compelling invite to wander the streets of a city rapidly shrinking under the onslaught of globalisation.