STEADY STATE 2012

Bangalore is in a period of adolescence with all the attendant growing pains and gains. It is expected to become an urban metropolis of 10 million people by 2012.

So rapidly is the landscape of the city transforming that at the time of writing this statement, the oldest among these photographs is just a year old and is already outdated as a piece of documentary evidence—the old airport straddling my neighbourhood gave way to a swanky new one this year. The metro rail, a peripheral ring road, satellite towns, and elevated expressways are part of the ongoing dream to upgrade the city's development infrastructure and support its soaring ambitions.

Following a long hiatus, I returned to Bangalore only to find myself having to resettle in a city that evoked memories, and at the same time, contradicted them. Photography became a way for me to reconcile myself to changes in me and around me.

These are diary notes from the conversations I will continue to have with the city I call home until the transformation is complete and it reaches its steady state. Each photograph is then an almost fictional piece of time at the midpoint between the past and the future.

Mahesh Shantaram
May 2008