From seven islands to a city of 20 million, Bombay (now Mumbai) has been shaped over centuries by political, economic and social forces.
From Koli fisherfolk to colonial planners, and from Bollywood stars to textile barons, many have shaped the western Indian city's landscape and identity.
The city is ever-evolving, the past giving way to the future, birthing new guises and blurring the old. From fishing nets to ports and mills to malls, Bombay has constantly reinvented itself and remained a city in flux.
A new exhibition 'Bombay Framed' charts the city's shape-shifting passage through the centuries using a stunning array of paintings, photographs, and multimedia prints.
More than 100 images spanning three centuries have an extraordinary range that document the city in its full diversity from the elite worlds of Zoroastrian merchants and cinema stars to the working-class lives of ordinary citizens.
Together they invite us to see the city itself as a kind of artwork: layered, complex and made up of many different experiences, Gyan Prakash, curator of the exhibition, told the BBC.
According to Prakash, there are a few key moments when Bombay really changed - in the 1830s and 40s, when reclamations and bunds joined the seven separate islets into a single island city.
Two decades later, in the 1860s, the fort walls came down, paving the way for imperial buildings to come up which gave the city its distinct colonial identity.
In the 1920s and 30s the Marine Drive corniche, with its iconic Art Deco buildings was constructed, birthing a uniquely modern architectural style.
Since the 2000s, the city's planners have been focused on building more utilitarian infrastructure, transforming how the city appears today.
Throughout its history, Bombay has remained a city of stark contradictions and wild extremes - luxury towers share space with shanty towns; ancient caves coexist with modern mills and atomic research facilities.
The exhibition 'Bombay Framed' aims to tell the city's story through the everyday lives of its people, showcasing the many faces that have contributed to the making of Bombay.
From Parsi philanthropists and Maharashtrian nobility to mill workers, the photographs reflect the city's complex social fabric.
The city's name was officially changed from Bombay to Mumbai in the mid-1990s to shed its colonial legacy, but the exhibition retains 'Bombay' in its title to reflect the time when most of these images were captured.
