Back in the 14th century, Hampi (in present-day Karnataka) was one of the most important cities in the world, thrice the size of contemporary Paris. Today, it lies abandoned.
Back in 2010, New Town (a satellite town of Kolkata) was a vast expanse of lakes and farms. Today, it is a bustling metropolis.
Photographer Rajib De found a powerful story of time and space, captured between Hampi and New Town now. My Kolkata takes you through his new photo book, Tale of Two Cities: Hampi/Newtown, comprising photographs that make you ponder over the fickleness of time.
‘Tale of two cities: Hampi/Newtown’ comprises 118 photographs
While Rajib had been taking pictures of New Town since its inception, the seeds of this book were laid in 2013. Returning from the to-be smart city in a bus, he saw someone watching a video of a region that looked eerily familiar, with stretches of empty land, a few towering structures, and barely any people. The passenger said that this was Hampi. “In the video, the golden hour was giving a perfect glow to this ancient city. Outside the bus, the golden hour was lighting up the new buildings of New Town,” he remembers.
Within two days, Rajib was on a train to Hampi. “I was spellbound, it felt like the place had been waiting for me. Over the next six years, I visited Hampi eight times,” he smiles.
By 2022, Rajib had captured 3,000 pictures of the heritage site, and 2,500 photographs of New Town. Upon examining the body of work in its entirety on his computer, he started seeing patterns. A lone highrise here, told a similar-yet-different story from a towering temple there. At both sites, there were women with cows, creating a scene that made it impossible to tell the era it belonged to. “I decided to juxtapose pictures from Newtown and Hampi in order to highlight the architectural and philosophical similarities that run through hundreds of years,” Rajib explains.
He finally unveiled the culmination of 14 years of work last month as Tale of two cities: Hampi/Newtown, comprising 118 photographs. Rajib also took the editorial choice to juxtapose photos from the two sites without mentioning which photograph is from Hampi, and which one is from New Town, in order to let readers ponder over the cyclical nature of civilisations.
With eerily similar scenes, Rajib drives home the fact that nothing is permanent
The book’s text is by Kalyan Ray, an admirer of Rajib’s photography for many years, and was supportive of the project from the time it was just an idea. “Rajib’s photographs evoke emotions that transport us beyond the photographs, into the constructions and deconstructions of time. They twin experiences of a city coming to be, and a city that now lives on in memory,” he adds.
Ray also emphasised the philosophical viewpoint of the book, which looks even-handedly at mutability and decay – and the birth and growth of the new. “Like all good works of art, it is more than a sum of its parts. More than the rise of New Town or fall of Hampi, the book is Rajib’s moving version of how we inhabit time and space.”
By 2022, Rajib had captured 3,000 pictures of Hampi and 2,500 photographs of New Town
The pages of the book are meant to reinforce the impermanence of life, calling out the tendency of human beings in equating ‘urbanisation’ with ‘development’. “In our pursuit of urbanisation, we are destroying nature. Lakes that were full and flowing a decade ago have vanished. The villagers who owned the land where highrises once stood, are relegated to becoming drivers or caretakers in those very buildings,” Rajib sighs.
The book also shows how Hampi saw the other side, where humans eventually vanished from, and nature began to reclaim what was once taken from it. “I’m not against urbanisation. I only advocate a more mindful approach to it. If there is one thing that the book beckons you to acknowledge, it is that eventually, life will come full circle.”