The Gateway of India from the Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay 1977 by Sooni Taraporevala

Looking at the Gateway of India in Sooni Taraporevala’s exceptional photograph, one is reminded that monuments have a habit of eluding time. Even though Bombay has become Mumbai, the city’s character transforming more than its name, the Gateway has remained immutable. 

It’s finally the picture’s composition—its division of the in-side and outside, its use of black and white—that makes us aware of time’s passage. The cane furniture and the ashtray all belong in that simpler era of the 1970s.

Taraporevala tells RD she was a sophomore at Harvard when she clicked this picture in 1977. “I had just borrowed money from my roommate and bought myself a Nikkormat camera. I took a leave of absence for a semester, ostensibly to photograph Bombay, but in reality, because I was desperately homesick,” she says.

Looking at the photo now, it’s hard to imagine Taraporevala’s age or her constraints. The picture seems to have been taken by one who is assured, at home in a city of wonder.