The city once had a well-connected network of 835 lakes. Today, less than 200 survive. What happened to the rest? Where were they located? What stands in their place today? These are some of the question that anyone interested in Bengaluru's history may want answers to.
As part of her art-cum-research project ‘Bangalore’s Disappeared Lakes’, German-based freelance artist and photographer Laura Fiorio is reaching out to citizens and asking them to share everything, from memories and stories to photographs related to the lost / forgotten lakes of the city.
She is in the city under the Bangalore Residency programme of the Goethe-Institut. She has been working on subjects that focus on inhabited landscape and its transformation. Her area of interest is housing, human geography and personal archives.
“I came to the city in November this year. When I heard about the lakes and how many of them have disappeared over the years, I was curious to know more. As part of my residency project, I decided to analyse the transformation of these lakes,” she said.
The artist wanted to make it a community-driven and participatory project. “Over the days, we will be collecting from the community memories, images related to the places which used to be lakes, and photographs of families living there,” she said.
Ms. Fiorio is in touch with historians and researchers in the city to build the repository. “I have started with focusing on water-bodies in the central part of the city, including Majestic,” she said.
At the end of the two-month project, she will publish a book with photographs and stories about the lost lakes, which will be made available to the public. “I will organise a series of workshops on urban development and plan to create an online portal. I hope the project will lead to a larger discussion about the city and the way it has developed, and the way it should develop in the future.”
