New Delhi Down The Decades : A Behind the Lens View of the City

The book attempts a photographer's chronicle of New Delhi's architectural history as photographed over the years by the author. The author is a longtime photojournalist and the book is a mash-up of his weekly and bi-weekly contributions to periodicals that happen to capture Delhi. The photographs are spectacular and for that reason alone the book is a worthy coffee- table addition to your collection. chaudhuri clearly has a love of sepia and monotones. soft lighting with traditional angles seem to be his photographic style of choice for almost all of Delhi.

For anyone who is an ardent 'Delhiite' the book offers little by way of the unknown about Delhi, Lutyens Delhi is discussed at length as is sir Herbert Baker's contribution to Delhi's unique architectural style. Although the book is a good introduction for those who are interested in how Delhi came to be – it lacks the depth, historicity and indeed character that a Kushwant singh or William Dalrymple could bring to the subject. The comparison is of course unfair, since chaudhuri does not claim to be a historian, yet the book comes across as a narrative that has been retro-fitted to a series of beautiful pictures that weren't necessarily meant to capture a historical tale of a quirky city.

Where is the New Delhi beyond the Lutyens and its colonial story? As chaudhuri points out, edwin Lutyens's design was a neo-classical ode to columns and arches that eventually gave way to the more functional concrete exteriors of today. The stories of these concrete structures, however, find no place in chaudhuri's book. A wide variety of more interesting modern buildings like the sahitya Academy, the sri Ram centre as well as community spaces such as Dilli Haat and the Wall projects of Delhi deserve addition, especially from a talented photographer whose lens could speak of the context in which they were built.