STEEL AND SUPPERS-

India is now considered an economic powerhouse but what did its industrial dawn look like? Sparseeing, a new photobook and exhibition in Delhi, gives us a glimpse through the personal archive of a chief electrical engineer in Jamshedpur.

- S KEERTHIVAS

WHAT did India's industrial transformation look like from inside a family home? And what happens when history is recorded not by official chroniclers but by someone quietly observing his immediate world? Sparseeing, a new photobook and exhibition in Delhi, turns these questions into a vivid encounter with memory, photography, and everyday life.

Opened on December 4 at Offset Projects in Okhla, the show centres on the personal archive of Keki Gazder Chief Electrical Engineer at TELCO (now Tata Motors) and a passionate amateur photographer. Living in Jamshedpur during the early decades of post-Independence India, Gazder documented a nation and a town in motion: factories rising, chimneys multiplying, townships being planned. But just as often, his camera lingered on the soft spaces of domesticity-family dinners, leisure outings, and festive gatherings.

A twin window

This dual gaze makes the archive remarkable. Prints, negatives, postcards, cabinet cards, and glass slides together reveal how industrial ambition and everyday warmth coexisted. Modernity also brought rupture but also settled alongside the comforting routines of home.