Metro

The Building of Delhi

Verena Jaekel, Sandip Kuriakose

The theme of the 6th European Month of Photography Berlin – Upheavals and Utopias. The Other Europe – refers to those economies outside of Europe that have rapidly expanding growth rates. They are the new hubs of capitalism in the 21st century; one of these can be found in India and its capital, Delhi.
Verena Jaekel (Berlin) and Sandip Kuriakose (Delhi) met in 2010 and discovered their shared interest in the construction of the metro. Metro is short for ‘metropolitan underground’; the term conveys the growing need among the citizenry to belong to an urbane, post-modern world. The idea of ‘metropolis’ is also connected to this; not only is Delhi the capital city, it is also the centre of capital in India.
Photographing the transformation of a city into a global metropolis is of great significance: it captures the moment of maximum effort, before everything turns into a single seamless global landscape. Jaekel and Kuriakose’s focus on the building of the metro shows how residents move within and perceive their changed living environment.