Shot from above, over the Indian city of Haridwar, the scene is a rammed-together jumble of low-rise houses in which the great river is nowhere to be seen. It looks as if the buildings themselves have swamped the Ganges. Yet, perhaps more poignantly, lacking in human warmth, there's something inanimate to this urban swell - as if the concrete has outgrown its inhabitants, too.
Broota is one of India's most prominent artists and is best known for his satirical paintings from the 1970s. Through a cast of sneering gorillas, and with his defining technique of creating his images by nicking away at thick paint on the canvas using a blade, Broota's works took aim at the disparity of greed and emaciated suffering that he perceived around him at that time.
The photographs that make up Traces of Man have developed from Broota's experiments with the form in the late 1990s. Akin to the nick-blade process of scratching away at his paintings, the artist taught himself Photoshop and uses it to etch away and splice together imagery that he has photographed over the past few years.
