If you’ve not yet got a copy of Stuart Freedman‘s The Palaces of Memory, pictures from the Indian Coffee Houses, I suggest you do now. It’s one of the most charming publications I’ve seen for a while, and I was pleased I decided to support the Kickstarter campaign – one of the 157 backers who together pledged the £10,496 that made it possible.
You can see 44 images from the Indian Coffee House project at Panos Pictures, and there are also pictures on the BBC web site and elsewhere. I was fortunate to see the photographer talking about and showing this work around six months ago to a crowded meeting of Photo-forum in London, and it was also featured on Lensculture.
Google will now find you a long list of reviews, articles and interviews about the work, but I’ll pick out just a few: Roads and Kingdoms has a nice interview with Freedman talking to their Director of Photography Pauline Eiferman; Slate’s Photo Blog Behold has a well-illustrated feature, and of course Freedman has his own web site including a blog, Umbra sumus – ‘we are but shadows’…, where his occasional posts are always worth reading.
But perhaps the nicest article I’ve so far found is on The Delhi Walla; City Moment – People of the Book, Indian Coffee House by Mayank Austen Soofi who took Freedman’s book to the Indian Coffee House in Connaught Place to the obvious delight of the workers whose pictures and those of their customers appear in it.