The panel discussion Eyes on Bombay was held in collaboration with NCPA and Jackfruit Research & Design, to inquire into the process of 'looking' or viewing. The event marked the preview of a photo exhibition ‘Bombay Jadoo’ by Betsy Karel. The panellists of this discussion came from different walks of life, and commented on ‘ways of seeing’ the city.

Betsy Karel opened the panel by sharing her experiences of doing street photography in Mumbai. She said that interesting photographs can emerge from the streets only when one loses oneself in the surroundings and becomes part of them. She made an observation about the streets of Mumbai – how individuals manage to maintain their islands of intimacy despite the overwhelming crowds. As a foreigner in the city, Karel shared how surprised she was to find that individuals seek other people and reach out to them in the crowds, unlike in western cities.

The second panellist, noted filmmaker Shyam Benegal agreed with Betsy Karel by saying that in Mumbai’s crowds, everybody’s private space is not ‘worked out’ or defined. Benegal reminded the audience how private conversations carry on over people’s clusters in crowded trains. He urged everyone to examine the difference between space perceptions in Bombay and Mumbai – Bombay being the older city with its mills and chawls and Mumbai being the modern version with high-rises and malls. He said that there was a larger sense of community in the older uses of space, while now the individuals were getting lost in the high-rises. Bringing the discussion to photography per se, Benegal read out relevant excerpts from Susan Sontag and Edward West’s books.

Shilpa Phadke, a Sociologist and a PUKAR Associate, said that the city is to be seen primarily in the lived experiences of its people. She focussed on the larger city dilemmas of contested spaces, such as the mill lands, slums, multiplexes and brought out the individual’s inability to walk on the streets and ‘see’ the city. Basing her observation in the PUKAR project ‘Gender & Space’, Shilpa shared how acutely aware women are, of the sense of public-private space. She talked of the ‘direction of gaze’ – who is looking at whom – and whose gaze is more powerful than others – taking the discussion to a more complex social level from photography itself. She commented on the city’s larger visual aesthetic which tends to be more exclusive and wondered “how can one ‘see’ a city; and more importantly, how can one ‘claim’ a city?”

Members of the audience posed pertinent observations about the intrusive nature of street photography – whether the photographer invades the personal space of the people being photographed. Some photographers who were present commented on the difference between street photography and photo journalism. The session concluded with refreshments and distribution of prints of selected photographs by Betsy Karel.