Hoppe’s Bombay 1929 and Santiniketan

Children playing under the Gateway of India monument, the Fort area with no motor vehicles and other such rare street scenes of early 20th century Mumbai captured by a British photographer, are on display at an exhibition at the city’s prime museum, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum, Kala Ghoda, since Thursday.

Captured by Emil Otto Hoppe (1878 -1972), a German-born British photographer in 1929, the images, shipped from California, are being displayed in India for the first time. Titled Hoppe’s Bombay 1929 and Santiniketan, the exhibition commemorates the 150th birth centenary of poet Rabindranath Tagore, who invited Hoppe to visit India in 1929.

The exhibition includes photographs of Mumbai and Santiniketan, the university started by Tagore in West Bengal. The EO Hoppe Estate Collection in California published these pictures in the 1990s. The Mumbai photos are of street scenes of south Mumbai, Malabar Hill etc.

The exhibition will be on till February 28 between 10.15am to 6pm at the Premchand Roychand Gallery of the museum.

Photo: Victoria Terminus, Bombay 1929, by Emil Otto Hopp ©