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Victoria Terminus by Homai Vyarawalla is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

Decisive Moment
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The Victoria Terminus in Bombay, now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal, as shot by Homai Vyarawalla (courtesy The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts)
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This photo of the former Victoria Terminus in Bombay was taken in about 1940 by Homai Vyarawalla (1913-2012) who was India’s first female photojournalist of note. Her first American solo, at the Rubin Museum in New York, shows her starting out as an avid modernist: Her rail-station shot could have come from Cartier-Bresson or the Bauhaus. Once she became a “pro”, however, she abandoned her arty ways and stuck to a more documentary style. But I wonder if that later mode really tells more truth than where she started out? (See a gallery of other Vyarawalla images at TheDailyBeast.com.)

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