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 - 13 ug / m3
NO2 - 17 ug / m3
RSPM - 65 ug / m3
"Madras possesses no natural harbour and the present artificial construction has been described by its creator, Sir Francis Spring,as 'a challenge flaunted in the face of nature'. An attempt was made in 1862 to meet the 'serious disadvantage of the absence of any natural harbour at a port where the surf is continual', but the construction of a screw-pile pier. In 1876 work wasbegun on a harbour sufficiently large 'to hold nine steamers from 3,000 to 7,000 tons' and when it was nearing completion in 1881 a devastating cyclone washed away half a mile of the breakwaters, threw the two top courses of concrete blocks into theharbour, burled over two of the Titan cranes used on the works, lowered and spread out the rubble base of the breakwaters, and washed away one and a half miles of construction railway. Undeterred by this disaster the engineers, after consultation with 'a committee of English experts' , returned to the fray. In 1884 building was begun again and in 1896 a harbour 'on practically the original design' was completed. It was 'just two walls, shaped like the jaws of pincers, running out into the sea', with the entrance, 500 feet in width, facing eastwards. But nature had another weapon in reserve with which to meet the 'challenge' ??? less dramatic than the cyclone, but exceedingly troublesome. Surf-driven sand accumulated from the south and silted up the harbour entrance, and ti became necessary to close the eastern gateway, and a new entrance was made in the north-east corner of the harbour and protected by a breakwater which projected on the sea-side to the north of this new harbour mouth. This arrangement has proved satisfactory up to the present."
A City in Transition
Page 18-19
C.W. Ranson
1938
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.