Madras Week: Some fascinating pictures, at Alliance Francaise

I visited the Alliance Francaise of Madras today to have a look at the exhibition of pictures titled ‘Images of Chennai’. Two young photographers, Karthick Ramalingam and Siva Chithirai, had taken the pictures displayed. These are pictures that you immediately relate to – temples, churches, market places, trains moving, sunrise… And all of them are of contemporary Chennai.

There have been visitors to the exhibition at regular intervals, Rudran, the person at the office, tells me. There are booklets on the history of the city as well.

A picture is worth more than a thousand words, they say. So, here are some of them:

The first shows the MRTS railway, the Egmore railway station and a racer; the second has sellers at a bazaar, a portrait of a Therakoothu artiste and runners at the Chennai marathon; the interiors of an MRTS station, a view of the Central Jail and a suburban train make up the third; the fourth has the gopuram of Kapaleeswarar Koil in Mylapore, the Luz Church, and an ancient temple in Madampakkam; and the fifth, though dominated by a Shiva sculpure, has wonderful natural images of mornings in Sembakkam and near the Beach Station.