Coffee Conversations: Stuart Freedman on Photographing the Indian Coffee House

Starbucks’ new leadership is currently attempting to steer the brand back towards its former self-defined role as the ultimate “third place”. While once the company sold itself as a place to linger, chat, and enjoy a break from the busy world, it had subsequently moved towards a quick-service, almost fast-food version of coffee: focused on mobile ordering and drive-thru, with little connection between customer and server.

Last year I wrote about this change, and whether Starbucks was ever truly a third place in the way that the sociologist Ray Oldenburg described it: As somewhere “that host[s] the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work”.

A few months earlier, I wrote about the Indian Coffee House—a much clearer example of a true third place. It is a decades-old, communist-founded and worker-owned cooperative that remains India’s largest coffee chain despite the country’s economic and demographic evolution. The Indian Coffee House, with its radical history, shabby charm, and stubborn refusal to modernise, remains popular among a subset of Indian society even as the country begins to embrace Westernised coffee chains.

Ballad of the Indian Coffee House

Despite evolving tastes and increased competition, India’s oldest and largest coffee chain—a communist-founded, worker-owned cooperative—is still going after 70 years.

The PouroverFionn Pooler

At the end of that article, I quoted from Stuart Freedman’s book ‘The Palaces of Memory’, in which the photojournalist documents the vibrancy and community that exists within each of the cooperative’s locations. “It wasn’t about coffee. It was a home away from home. We sat till the lights were switched off”, the activist Ram Shastri told Freedman.

As I wrote in that piece: “Although Starbucks and other chains have commoditised the concept of the ‘third place’, spaces like the Indian Coffee House remain closer to the radical spheres of debate of the historic coffee shops. As Ram Shastri tells Freedman, ‘All revolutions start in coffee houses you know’”.

Before the article was published, I spoke with Freedman about his work, using images included in the book as a jumping off point to discuss his experiences visiting and photographing dozens of Coffee Houses around India.

“I spent 30 years as a photojournalist; I had a good career. I've done three books: First one was on Lebanon, then it was ‘The Englishman and the Eel’ about pie and mash shops”, Freedman told me. “[That led to] a PhD on pie and mash shops, but it wasn't really on pie and mash shops. It was about ‘white' working class identity and memory that coincided with the rise of austerity, Brexit and so-called ‘populism’. [Pie and mash shops are traditional Cockney establishments that serve a dish consisting of minced beef pies, mashed potato, and a parsley sauce known as ‘liquor’ often with a side of jellied eels.] These places, like the Indian Coffee Houses, like the greasy spoon cafs I grew up with, remain important in terms of memory”.

In his third book, he found a connection between the Indian Coffee Houses and his own life. “I’ve worked in lots of countries around the world, and I look for similarity—I don’t necessarily look for difference. And India, and the coffee houses, struck me as a kind of a memoir to my own past, which is why I was engaging with them for such a long time”.

For this interview, I chose five of my favourite photographs from The Palaces of Memory and asked Freedman to describe his experiences taking each one as well as his feelings about the Indian Coffee House more generally.