Shortlisted

One of the photographs I submitted for  the 'Home' category of the 'INDIA Future of Change' photographic competition has been shortlisted: 'INDIA Future of Change'.

India Future of Change

Some of the MS:SP Fellowship photos from India have been included in the 'India Future of Change' photographic competition.

You can see them on the flicker site here: India Future of Change.

Elephants

Across the river from the City Museum and the Tagore Memorial Hall is an area known as Jamalpur, its close to the old calico mills and there are large fruit and flower markets here which I had passed through many times before in a rickshaw.

I decided to walk back to Arts Reverie from the museum over Sandar Bridge and through Jamalpur. I had been told the elephants which I had seen around the city, crossing Ellis Bridge, eating greens in Manek Chowk, and collecting alms in Gandhi Road were housed in this area, near the Jagdush Mandir, and I thought I would take a closer look on my route back to Dhal ne Pol.

I had once seen an exhibition of Henry Moores drawings of an elephants skull at the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne and been struck both by the scale and the complexity of the form of the skull.

The elephants were trully amazing..... and inquisitive! I was great to be so close to such wonderful and huge beasts. Many were old, with pigment loss on their trunks.

It was the end of the day and they were being settled down for the night, their 'saddles' were stacked against the wall of a building.

On the way home I passed Jamalpur Gate or 'Darwaja', one of the many gates which once allowed passage beyond the walled city.

The walls of the city, built in the late 1400's, have now all but disappeared. Those gates which remain are now often small islands of calmness and history caught in the middle of the busy traffic which passes around the ring road to the city. Its interesting that both Dhaka and Ahmedabad have growing voices calling for the protection of their architectural heritage. The Pols and Haveli's in Ahmedabad and the colonial houses and city gateways in Old Dhaka.

Tagore Memorial Hall - Ahmedabad

I had seen the outside of the Tagore Memorial Hall during my first few days in Ahmedabad and had been meaning to return for a more detailed look. The building is quiet amazing, the hall is situated on the bank of the Subarmati River in the City of Ahmedabad, very close to the National Institute of Design and the Ahmedabad City Museum. As a theatre it seats 750 and was built in 1971 from cast concrete, the structure is a series of reinforced concrete frames.The building was designed by the architect Balkrishna Doshi. The hall is named in memory of Rabindranath Tagore a famous Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright, who helped shape both Indian and Bengali culture. He was a vocal critic of the British Raj, a supporter of Independence and had penned both the Indian and Bangladesh national anthems.

I like the way the interior structure carries through the 'skin' and out to the exterior of the building.

The transition of the forms in the columns was very beautiful, as was the scale and light.

Like Khans Institute of management building and the architecture of the old city everywhere there were views with multiple layered frames.

Bhuj