Palaces of Memory: Stuart Freedman's love affair with Indian coffee houses

Stuart Freedman's photographs of Indian coffee houses pay tribute to a near-lost egalitarian idea of affordable food, democratic spaces and familial ease

A family of four is sitting at the table, two plates in front of them. One child, barely visible in the frame, is lying sprawled across the Rexene chair. The other, a pajama-clad boy, is standing by the table, eating off his mother’s plate. It is a homey, intimate photograph which captures the ease and informality of the Indian Coffee House. 

“When I look at this photograph, I get the curious sense that the image echoes some of the inexpensive outings I had with my family, growing up in a working-class home in London,” says British photographer/ writer Stuart Freedman.

Indian coffee house branch in Kollam | Photo courtesy: tasveer/Dauble

Best known for his documentation of war zones from Albania to Afghanistan, and former Yugoslavia to Haiti, Freedman’s fascinating new book Palaces of Memory: Tales from the Indian Coffee House chronicles coffee houses across India, and tells the story of a country whose past and present coexist in a constantly changing collage of contrasts.

Freedman’s love affair with Indian coffee houses began when he arrived in Delhi in 1994. “Delhi was chaotic and confusing,” he recalls. One day, however, he chanced upon the Indian Coffee House on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, and his perspective shifted. “I felt strangely at home there, and the coffee house became a sort of refuge for me,” he says. Just like the greasy-spoon cafés of his childhood, the coffee house was a space where people spent hours discussing the state of the world. 

Indian Coffee House branch in New Delhi | Photo courtesy: tasveer/Dauble

For a long time, Freedman didn’t take out his camera at all while in the coffee house. Then came 2010, with rumours flying thick and fast that Delhi’s coffee house was to be shut down. The head waiter was quoted in a national daily saying that all the wait staff were willing to contribute five per cent of their salaries to pay the coffee house’s dues. Despite the entry of Barista, Starbucks and other large global coffee chains, the public outcry over these rumours was immense. “It was as if, suddenly, Delhi had rediscovered its love for the old place,” Freedman recalls. “And I came to realise what an important venue it had been for its political and cultural history.”

Indian Coffee House branch in Chandigarh |
Photo courtesy: tasveer/Dauble

Consequently, Freedman began to seek out coffee houses wherever he went across India between 2010 and 2013 — in Kolkata, Shimla, Pondicherry, Kochi, Chandigarh and elsewhere. Not only did they prove to be great places for information, conversation and, of course, endless cups of coffee, he discovered that they all shared a commonality of culture and a commonality of clientele, many of whom were regulars who sat there every day, right until closing time. 

Often, for a photographer, the camera perceives more than the eye does. Perhaps it was when he began photographing life as he experienced it in coffee houses that Freedman had the epiphany that changed his perspective of culture. “I realised that the people in the Indian coffee houses were the same, with the same aspirations, hopes and loves,” he says. “The coffee house became, for me, a translational device that allowed me to see the similarity, not difference, between cultures.” 

Some of the most evocative photographs in the series are of ordinary people, simply sitting and enjoying inexpensive food and unhurried conversations. They seem oblivious to their coffee cups, which are, more often than not, as Freedman describes in the book, “gloriously chipped”, or the rust on their chairs, or the grime on the walls around them. A photograph of one coffee house’s menu pasted on a wall brings home the sheer affordability of these places, which makes them truly egalitarian venues for people to meet and discuss the affairs of the day. “The coffee house is one of those rare non-monetised public spaces left in the city today,” says Freedman. With their faded photographs of leaders long gone and their unpretentious, even shabby, interiors that serve to put people at ease, these coffee houses offer a stark contrast to the glitzy malls and suchlike of westernised India. Freedman’s book also includes fascinating, beautiful portraits of many of the waiters he encountered — the one on the cover is particularly noteworthy. 

At the recently concluded eponymous travelling exhibition in Delhi, part of Tasveer’s 12th season of travelling exhibitions supported by Dauble, Freedman’s evocative but decaying “palaces of memory” draw sighs of nostalgia from viewers. The prints are large, drawing people in and encouraging them to reminisce about the coffee houses they’ve spent time in. Many reminiscences, especially from older viewers, are about the post-Independence austerity of their childhoods, which continues to be echoed in coffee houses even today. Some images on display feel so un-posed, so natural, that it is as if the photographer has hit the pause button on living moments. 

Indian Coffee House branch in Kolkata | Photo courtesy: tasveer/Dauble

Photo courtesy: tasveer/Dauble

“A good photographer breathes the same air as his subjects,” says Freedman. “I would go to a coffee house, sit down, have a coffee and a conversation or two, simply wait for the right moments to present themselves.” In spite of being so candid, almost unsparing in the truths they tell, the sense one gets of these photographs is that they are born out of love. 

“Coffee houses across the country have allowed me to access an India that is far removed from the stereotypes of poverty and exotica,” says Freedman. To him, these experiences represent not only the “real” India — but also a universality of human experience. “To me, these images represent a shared culture — these could be people sitting in one of those Left Bank cafés in Paris or in the ahwas of Cairo,” he says. 

Not surprising, then, that The Palaces of Memory, first published in the United Kingdom by Dewi Lewis in 2015, has struck chords not only in India, but internationally too. It was a finalist at Pictures of the Year International POYi for Best Photography Book of the Year and was chosen for The American Photography Annual (AI-AP) in 2016. It has been published in India in 2017 by Tasveer and carries a foreword by Amit Chaudhuri and an essay by Freedman.

“The Coffee House is part of a living archeology and its memories, like coffee stain hieroglyphs, only partially wiped each day by the grimy cloths of the waiters, endure,” Freedman writes in the book. Be that as it may, it is also clear that while Freedman is not a romantic in the classic sense of the word, The Palaces of Memory is nothing short of a passionate love letter, not only to the Coffee House, but to the country he has made his own.

The Palaces of Memory — Tales from the Indian Coffee House by Stuart Freedman is available at tasveerbookstore.com/products/stuart-freedman-the-palaces-of-memory for Rs 2,500