It is less like being on a bus than in a gallery. Waking in, it is hard to tell where the chaos of the busy road ends and the immersive gallery begins. The carpet is grey, the surroundings pearly white, lined with a panoramic gallery of the cityscape, heritage and street life in Hyderabad as — CE caught the country’s first gallery on wheels, an initiative of the Indian Photo Festival in association with Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC).
The air is noisy with traffic and yet soothed with a slow melody. One wouldn’t be entirely surprised to find the grey carpet bulge as elevated stands to make room for the tyres as they realise they are on a TSRTC bus. As far as art spaces go, Hyderabad on Wheels is certainly unusual — and not only because it moves across the city but in what feels very much like the middle of nowhere, yet everywhere — each picture is like a window on the bus, an escapade into the city.
“The gallery on wheels is a collation of photographs by different lensmen in the city. Each picture frames the ‘essence’ of what one would find in Hyderabad. It has landscape, nature, heritage, cityscape, portrait, culture and streets,” says founder and director of the Indian Photo Festival, Aquin Mathews. Indeed! Hyderabad on Wheels is in harmony with its surroundings — to witness the kind of pictures that would seem as if one is looking out of a bus window and not some posh gallery, given it’s all Hyderabadi and in Hyderabad. “The idea is simple.
We want art to reach people who don’t have the time or luxury of visiting art galleries. This gallery will be moving across hotspots in the city and will halt at some locations. We will also take this gallery to Government schools and colleges where children do not have much exposure to other fields,” Aquin added. “Through our various initiatives, TSRTC aims to bring a difference to people’s lives in ways that were never explored earlier.
TSRTC is the first state transport department in the country to take art to people. Photography is a very powerful medium to convey stories and influence people. We encourage people in Hyderabad to visit this unique first - of - its kind photo exhibition on the wheels,” said TSRTC Vice-Chairman and MD, VC Sajjanar during the launch of Hyderabad on Wheels, last weekend.