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 June 2015below were the details of the pollution level:
SO2 - 12 ug / m3
NO2 - 18 ug / m3
RSPM - 49 ug / m3
"Outside the Fort there is always the sea in all its varying moods and shades; deep indigo under the stiff sea breeze, green-gray under the lowering sky of the North East monsoon, and intense azure blue in the morning calm, when the monsoon has spent its last fury and emptied its water-laden clouds. At night the long line of breaking surf is marked in phosphorescent light; by day it is a dazzling white as it beats upon the long stretch of sandy beach. The black hulls of the steamers plough their way, rough or smooth, through the waves to the harbour, and the sound of their siren call for the pilot mingles with the caw ofthe rooks, the call of the bugles and the song of the wagtails. In old days when the white wings of the sailing vessels were seen instead of the black smoke of the funnel, a gun announced the arrival of a ship as it dropped its anchor in the roads.There was no harbour then, nor even a pier, or apology for breakwater. The ships tossed at anchor in the open roads, and discharged passengers and cargo into the rough surf-boats of the country."
Fort St. George Madras
Page 186-187
Mrs. Frank Penny
1900
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.