Dhabawallah, or Professional Lunch Distributor, Bombay, Maharashtra

Singh, a pioneer of color street photography, worked and published prolifically from the late 1960s until his sudden death, in 1999. Born into an aristocratic family in Rajasthan, Singh was a thoroughly cosmopolitan artist. He lived abroad for most of his adult life—in Hong Kong, Paris, London, and New York—but his eye was perpetually drawn back to his native India. Working with a handheld camera and color slide film, he recorded the country’s dense milieu in complex, frieze-like compositions teeming with incident, fractured by reflections, and pulsating with opulent color. In the early 1990s, Singh turned his attention to Bombay (now Mumbai), India’s bustling capital of commerce on the Arabian Sea. The street scenes he made there seem to radiate energy, as if the elements are held in suspension by centripetal force. Hands, gestures, and gazes swirl around a still center point, usually anchored by an individual who either pointedly ignores the camera or stares back at it with confrontational directness, as in this portrait of a dhabawalla, who delivers lunch to workers around the city. This print is part of a group of
twenty-one vintage color photographs by the artist acquired directly from his estate.