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 2015 below were the details of the pollution level:
SO2 - 15 ug / m3
NO2 - 20 ug / m3
RSPM - 65 ug / m3
"Mylapore is an important place in Vaishnava, Saiva, and Jaina tradition and the Vaishnava Saint Peyalwar is connected in popular tradition with a sacred well in the place. It is the favourite residential quarter of wealthy Indians, including a number of high officials and prosperous Advocates. The beautiful Car Streets running round the temple and the ornamental tank to the west of it are lined with substantial houses, while Luz Road leading from the Cutcherry Street to the Luz Church and beyond to Mowbray's Road, is lined with fine bungalow-residences, being in fact the West end of Hindu Madras."
The Official Handbook of the Corporation of Madras
Page 73
Ed. F.E. James
1933
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.