For »No Buddha in Suburbia«, Peter Bialobrzeski returns to India, the subcontinent where he took the pictures for his first book (XXXHoly) in the 1990s. This new photographic study on society and urban development is the result of an invitation from the Goethe Institute to Mumbai. Mumbai's suburbs are among the largest and most densely populated urban areas on earth. In contrast to the more contemplative western understanding of suburbia, one finds here seemingly dystopian, for us hardly imaginable living conditions, which are dominated by garbage, air pollution and noise. A seemingly uncontrolled mixture of half-dilapidated buildings, brand new skyscrapers, slums, billboards and elevated streets shape the cityscape. The population density is an incredible 22,000 people per square kilometer!

Peter Bialobrzeski is one of the defining German photographers of the last decades. In addition to the twenty monographic books that have appeared since 2000, he has had exhibitions in Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia. Among other prizes, he won the World Press Award twice (2003 and 2010) and was awarded the Erich Salomon Prize of the DGPh in 2012.
Rahul Mehrotra, the author of the text, works as an architect in Mumbai and is Professor of Urban Planning and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Boston. He is involved in numerous institutions for the preservation of threatened buildings and urban development in India, such as the "Indian Institute for Human Settlement".