Dinesh Mehta

The CEPT alumnus is a designer, freelance architectural photographer, exhibition designer, documentary film-maker and visiting faculty in architectural institutions.

Curated by: Rupali Sebastian
Photographs: Courtesy Dinesh Mehta

Mumbai-based Mehta travels extensively to document archeological sites, as well historical, traditional and contemporary architecture, culture, people, traditions, lifestyle, and landscapes. But the most interesting facet of his work is that he is India’s first professional kite photographer. Using the eco-friendly and decidedly less controversial cousin of the drone, Mehta has captured beautiful shots of iconic structures, precincts and events — the Kumbh Mela, the Sabarmati Riverfront, the Taj Mahal Hotel…

“These images are the architects’ concerns of interior spaces in relation to outside,” says the photographer of the images presented in this feature. The spaces here are layered to respond to the outside as well as internal spatial organization. Conventionally, today one finds the interior as more of a showroom expression manifesting all that is available in consumer market. These photographs of internal spaces judicially express the harmony in material selection and spatial organization. The inside and outside blend as one entity, creating a balance living with nature. These environments are holistically designed considering outside and inside as complementary, sharing the privacy and quietness of inside with light, ventilation and view of outside. The layering of spaces, wall elements, fenestrations are designed to interact with the outside. The architecture in the images is a result of innovation and functional requirement of the inside expressed with local ethos of material, craft and technology fusing with nature, light, air and in continuation with tradition and culture.”

Dinesh Mehta commenced professional photography in 1974.