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 April 2015below were the details of the pollution level:
SO2 - 19 ug / m3
NO2 - 21 ug / m3
RSPM - 62 ug / m3
"Public lotteries, which were then legal, were started by private enterprise in Madras in 1795 as a means of providing money to support charities - the Male Asylum and others - connected with St. Mary's Church in the fort. Government imposed one condition upon the promoters, but otherwise did not interfere for the first few years. A certain portion of the sum was to be set aside for the repair of roads and bridges of Madras by which the natives and the Europeans would equally benefit. These ventures were called "The Male Asylum and Road Lotteries," and they speedily sprang into popularity with all classes."
On theCoromandel Coast
Page 30
Mrs. F.E. Penny
1908
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.