Linking Road, Bandra West

The Indian city of Mumbai is a chaotic, visually dense world that has been in constant motion since time immemorial. When the global COVID-19 pandemic caused a national lockdown, all that activity stopped abruptly as Mumbai’s human animators retreated to the safety of their homes.   A city in which it had been nearly impossible to find views unobstructed or unoccupied by people, whether of buildings, streets, plazas, or other public spaces, was suddenly empty, silent, and left visible as if for the first time.   These circumstances gave me a unique opportunity as a photographer, resulting in the creation of Mumbai Lost and Found. They allowed me to depict an urban India without the human element that always defines it in photographs. For the first time, because of this sudden depopulation, I was able to create images of my native environment that were not, by default, about a specific moment.   I was reminded of Eugene Atget’s late 19th- and early 20th-century documentary photographs