Imagine a steam locomotive chugging into Egmore station in 1965 or a Tata city bus zooming across the GST road in 1973 with a view of the Pallavaram Hill. Ian Manning’s collection of historic photographs document the rail and road services in Madras and its suburbs in the 1960s and these have been put up on display as a part of ‘Lineside’, a photo exhibition organised by the Australian Consulate in Chennai to mark Madras Week.

“I had initially visited Madras as a teenager and then returned in 1965 as an Economics teacher in the Madras Christian College, when I shot several of these photos. I travelled around Chennai on my bicycle to take a lot of photos between 1965 and 1969,” said Mr. Manning, an Australian, who said he was extremely passionate and fascinated about the railways.

He was in conversation with historian V. Sriram and ‘Poochi’ Venkat, who has worked on restoring and digitising his photographs over the last eight years. The exhibition, which will be on till September 6 at the Wandering Artist, R.A. Puram, has photos which document steam and electric locomotives set against the backdrop of many prominent buildings and landmarks of the city back then, as well as the idyllic cityscape.

“The photos reflect how life was back then – unhurried and calm. From Mr. Manning’s collection of nearly 1,200 photos, I have managed to curate and restore nearly 120 photos to perfection and we have more photos of the city which we are working on getting restored as well,” said Mr. Venkat.

A.K. Kathpal, Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer from the Southern Railways, was the chief guest. Susan Grace, Australian Consul General in Chennai, said that they were pleased to be learning more about the history and heritage of the city, as well as celebrate the contribution of Mr. Manning through his work.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Staff Reporter / Chennai – September 03rd, 2018