Drawing on influences from the New Topographics movement and the seminal work of Hilla and Bernd Becher, this series on Water Towers in New Delhi explores the city’s urban fabric through these markers in the landscape. Photographed with a large-format camera and color film, the water towers are shown centered in the frame with the city unfolding around them. They are significantly taller than everything around them, reflecting the lack of height in New Delhi’s urban landscape and hinting at their function in providing pressurised water to 4 storey apartments and houses around them. In this context, the water towers function both as a modern version of the village well and as a crucial, if often overlooked, element of a modernising society.

' In approaching this project, I was inspired by New Delhi’s rich heritage of modern architecture and choose to focus on utilitarian water towers found around the city. Working with a large-format camera and color film, I show these industrial structures in the center of the frame silhouetted against the sky in contrast to the city unfolding around them. As physical markers in the landscape, the water towers present an alternate mapping of the city, drawing attention to housing colonies, factories, and parks. In this capacity, they are linked to large-scale industrial projects such as dams, steel and power plants, factories, social housing, scientific research institutes along with bridges and other infrastructure (all built with concrete) that promised a path towards self-sufficiency
for India and a way to modernise a largely agrarian society. The photographs also function as a typographical study allowing for comparison of features of these structures and of the landscape around them.'



Text and Photographs by Randhir Singh

Website: randhirsingh.net
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