Charles Pertwee: The Khumbu

Photo © Charles Pertwee-All Rights Reserved

Charles Pertwee is a photojournalist, known for his reportage in crisis stricken locations such as Banda Aceh and Afghanistan. He graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London with a degree in the History of East Asia, and took up photography soon after graduation. He has since worked for such diverse clients as The New York Times, Wired, CNN Traveller, Marie Claire, Universal Music and Nike. He's currently based in Nantes, France after living in Singapore. 

His galleries are all worthy of praise, but the two that appealed to me the most are of his work of The Khumbu (in black & white) and of Myanmar (Burma).

The Khumbu is located in northeastern Nepal, and the famous Tengboche Buddhist monastery is there. Tengboche is the largest gompa of the region.

Dennis Cordell: Buddhist Monks

Photo © Dennis Cordell-All Rights Reserved

383...that's the number of square format black & white portraits of Buddhist monks (and a few sadhus) that Dennis Cordell is exhibiting on his website; all made with a film Hasselblad which he prefers to the 35mm format. These are not photographs made because the subjects are handsome or beautiful...they're are ethnographic in nature. I believe he uses and pushes Tri-X film, then scans the negatives and prints digitally. I've featured Dennis' portraits of Buddhist novices at the Gyudzin Tantric Monastery School in Ladakh before. These were published on Flickr, but he has now acquired a standalone website.

I'm not certain where all these impressive portraits were made, but I did notice that some had background information that indicated Bodh Gaya. A religious site and place of pilgrimage in the Indian state of Bihar, Bodh Gaya is famous for being the place of the Buddha's attainment of enlightenment. It is one of the most important of the main four pilgrimage sites related to the life of the Buddha. The other three are Kushinagar, Sarnath (both in India) and Lumbini (Nepal).

Dennis trained as a painter, and his favorite subject matter, either in painting or in photography, has always been portraiture...especially of Buddhist monks and similar. He prefers black & white because, in his own voice: "The greater the range of tonality between black and white, the greater, for me, is the image. A photo can never have too many shades of grey. Greys are the midtones that create the designs and textures woven into the photo."

I agree. This is the case, perhaps not always...but often. As I mentioned in an earlier post about my own photographs of Bali, I got too much color while there...and I found black & white more calming...more soothing and more, in a strange way, realistic.

Ian Winstanley: Pashupathi Sadhus

Photo © Ian Winstanley-All Rights Reserved

Here's a collection of sadhus' portraits by Ian Winstanley, a commercial photographer based in the UK. Exclusively involved in the advertising and design industries, Ian later also specialized in fine art based work.

Photographing in Nepal for a book, Ian spent time on the banks of the Bagmati river in Kathmandu's holy site known as Pashupathi. It was here, in 2001, that the much-loved King Birendra and other members of Nepal’s royal family were cremated after a massacre blamed on the crown prince, who also killed himself. The site is considered as one of the oldest and most holy of temples dedicated to Shiva, and sadhus and other Hindu faithful have been drawn to it since the 5th century.

In Hinduism, sadhus are mystics, ascetics, practitioners of yoga and wandering monks. Technically, sadhus are solely dedicated to achieving the fourth and final Hindu goal of life known as moksha, through meditation. However, many of sadhus are nothing more (or less) than wandering homeless individuals, relying on charity of others to survive.

The Economist's More Intelligent Life website has also published some of Ian's sadhus photographs here.

Kevin Bubriski: Nepal

Photograph © Kevin Bubriski-All Rights Reserved
Kevin Burbriski arrived in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1975, and spent about 4 years working in remote villages. He returned in 1984 as a photographer, and with a 4” x 5” view camera, a Nepalese photographic assistant, and two porters, he traveled the length and breadth of the country for the better part of three years.

I mentioned Kevin Bubriski's work on this blog in connection with his exhibition at the Rubin Musuem in NYC, but I read (via PDN) that he was named the 2010-2011 Robert Gardner Visiting Artist Fellow at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology. The fellowship carries a $50,000 stipend and will allow the photographer-documentarian to continue his work in the northwest of Nepal.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the International Center of Photography, all in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

Kevin's website showcases his work from Venice, Pakistan, India, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Egypt and Nepal among other countries...but it's his work of Nepal that resonates the most with me.

Kevin German: Mount Everest

Not many people have their 30th birthday at a base camp of Mount Everest, but Kevin German is one of them, and Luceo Images showcases his photo essay here.

Kevin German studied photography and journalism at Washington State University, and worked for newspapers from California to Florida. In 2008, he moved to Vietnam to focus on humanitarian documentaries, where co-founded the collective Luceo Images. He has won numerous awards, and his clients include Bloomberg News, CNN Traveller, Forbes, International Trucking, Monocle Magazine, National Geographic, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Asia, Time, Vanity Fair, and others.

His photo essays on Vietnam such as In The Footsteps of Ghosts and Forgotten are particularly compelling. Also have a look at the short video Voice of Hope about the undocumented Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

POV: Nepal's Gadhimai Mela: Atrocity?

Photo © Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP/Courtesy WSJ-All Rights Reserved
Here's a thought to coincide with Thanksgiving, one of our most hallowed of celebrations.

The Bariyapur festival (also known as the Gadhimai Mela) has been in full swing in Nepal for the past few days. As you can read in the following excerpt, the age-old festival involves slaughtering of thousands of animals as sacrifice to a Hindu goddess of power.

The ceremony began with prayers in a temple by tens of thousands of Hindus before dawn Tuesday. Then it shifted to a nearby corral, where in the cold morning mist, scores of butchers wielding curved swords began slaughtering buffalo calves by hacking off their heads. Over two days, 200,000 buffaloes, goats, chickens and pigeons are killed as part of a blood-soaked festival held every five years to honor Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

Animal sacrifice has had a long history in Nepal, an overwhelmingly Hindu country and, until recently, even in parts of India. Notwithstanding, animal-rights protesters from all over the world have decried and criticized this religious tradition as barbaric and atrocious.

My knee-jerk reaction when I saw this photograph on the Wall Street Journal's Photo Journal was one of revulsion, but then I remembered that we, in the United States, will consume 45 million turkeys for Thanksgiving alone...and while the slaughtering methodology may be slightly different, it's still an uncomfortable parallel, isn't it?. If you need to be reminded, you can always look for the clip of ever-hilarious Sarah Palin giving a press conference while a couple of turkeys were being "prepared" in the background.

And for the religious-minded, let's not forget The Binding of Isaac, in Genesis 22:1-24, which is the story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah, but an angel intercedes at the very last minute, and Abraham then sacrifices a ram (who, as luck would have it, was placidly munching grass around the corner) instead.

Similarly, Islam requires Muslims to offer a sacrifice by slaughtering a sheep, cow, or goat during the Festival of Sacrifice or Eid el-Adha. It similarly commemorates Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son Ishmael (not Isaac as in the Hebrew Bible) in the name of God, who sent a ram instead, thus sparing Ishmael's life. To this day, thousands upon thousands of bleating sheep are slaughtered in Muslim countries because of a religious tradition originating from the Hebrew Bible. Interesting, huh?

As I said, just a thought on this Thanksgiving day. Have a nice one.

Tom Van Cakenberghe: The Living Goddess

Tom Van Cakenberghe is originally from Antwerp, Belgium and lives in Kathmandu, Nepal since 2004 and works as a press photographer.

His website brings us a number of galleries on Nepal, but most interesting to me is The Living Goddess photo gallery...where he captured luminous (and candid) images of the Kumari. He must have been granted special access to be able to make these images. There's no further information on his gallery, but the best known is the Royal Kumari of Kathmandu, who lives in the Kumari Ghar, a palace in the center of the city.

Worshiping a pre-pubescent girl, who is not a born goddess, as the source of supreme power is an old Hindu-Buddhist tradition in Nepal.

The traditions of the Vajrayana sect of Mahayana Buddhism, girls 4-7 years old, who belong to the Nepali Sakya community, and have an auspicious horoscope, are chosen on the basis of 32 attributes of perfection. Among these are the color of eyes, shape of teeth and voice quality.

There are further Hindu-Buddhist rituals that follow which finally determine the real Kumari.

Niki Taxidis: Nepal & Tibet

Here's the work of Niki Taxidis, an Australian-born freelance photographer who worked in remote areas of Australia in health care and forensic sciences for over 12 years. She spent two years as a crime-scene examiner and photographer and has volunteered in health care, education and photographic projects both overseas and within Australia.

Don't skip the entry page of her website, which opens up with a lovely piece of Tibetan music.

Bas Uterwijk: Nepali New Year

Bas Uterwijk lives in Amsterdam, is an alum of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico City (and plans on attending the next one in Manali in July), and has now sent me a link to a multimedia production of his colorful photographs made during his travels to Nepal.

Bas has been telling stories with images for most of his career as a computer graphics artist for a video game company, and has recently made the jump to being a full-time working photographer. We wish him all the luck in the world.

Nepalese New Year's celebrations in Thimi by Bas Uterwijk

Eric Tourneret: The Honey Gatherers

Photo ©Éric Tourneret-All Rights Reserved.
The Rai (aka Raji) people live in the Himalayan foothills of central Nepal, and are known as the honey hunters. Twice a year, Rai men gather around steep cliffs that are home to the world's largest honeybee, and as they have for generations, these men are to harvest its honey. The harvest ritual usually starts with a prayer and sacrifice of flowers, fruits, and rice. A fire is then lit at the base of the cliff to smoke the bees from their honeycombs.

The honey hunters then descend the cliffs, harnessed to a ladder braided bamboo well over 250 feet above ground. With the rest of their teams securing the ropes, and providing tools up and down as needed, the honey hunters fight the bees as they cut chunks of honey from the comb.

This is the work of photographer Éric Tourneret, who after traveling to Djibouti for his military service, began a career as photojournalist for a number of French magazines. Examples of his fascinating photo reportage include the indigenous sorcerers and healers of the Ivory Coast, the “Transvestites of Islam” in Pakistan, and his work on bees.

Éric Tourneret's "The Honey Gatherers of Nepal".

Kumari: Nepal's Living Goddess

Photograph © Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
I read on the National Geographic’s website that Nepal has just chosen a new Kumari, the living goddess, a few days ago. The Kumari is essentially Nepal’s virgin goddess, whose body houses the spirit of Taleju (an incarnation of Goddess Durga).

There are stringent rules for a girl to be chosen as a Kumari. She must belong to the Shakya clan (a community of goldsmiths), her family must be extremely pious Hindus, she must have 32 characteristics of physical perfection (including a set of 40 teeth), and she has to prove her fearlessness by spending a night in a dark room with decapitated carcasses.

The chosen Kumari will be taken away from her family (it’s a huge honor), declared a living goddess, and installed in her royal chambers. She will not talk to ordinary mortals, her feet won’t touch the ground and she won’t venture out of her palace more than a handful of times a year. She loses her status with the onset of puberty, and returns to her family.

To me, taking a child away from his or her parents is cruel, but I can't judge whether the Kumari tradition constitutes child abuse or not. With many traditions that are not ours, Western sensibilities frequently over-react, and we view such practices through our own set of prisms. However, there are also a number of Nepali organizations that criticize the Kumari tradition, and I feel these are the best suited to do so and are the most qualified to establish a dialogue between traditionalists and modernists.

A National Geographic video can be seen here

Lourdes Segade: Bhutan & Nepal

Photograph © Lourdes Segade/All Rights Reserved
Lourdes Segade is a Spanish photojournalist, based in Barcelona. Her work is often seen in Spain, where she publishes in Sunday newspaper supplements such as La Vanguardia Magazine or El Semanal, and in other magazines such as Yo Dona or Revista, of La Vanguardia newspaper or other publications, like DAMn, The New York Times and the IHT.

She has shown her work in screenings at several festivals, including the International Meeting of Photojournalism in Gijón and also the Albarracín Photo and Journalism Seminar, both in Spain. She's a member of the French collective, PictureTank, and is a co-founder of the EVE Photographers, a collective of emerging women photographers.

I feature Lourdes' portfolio titled Nepal & Bhutan: A Glimpse, as I'm already experiencing serious withdrawal pangs from my Bhutan photo expedition. I particularly liked the photograph of the dancer's skirt at the Punakha dzong during Losar...a wide angle shot, with just a touch of blur.

Brian Sokol: Asia & Nepal

Photograph Brian Sokol-All Rights Reserved
Brian Sokol is a photojournalist who's documenting Asia for more than a decade. Based in New Delhi, he's a fluent Nepali speaker and has covered various conflicts in the Himalayan regions.

His photographs appear in publications such as The New York Times, Time, Stern, and Der Spiegel. He is the recipient of National Geographic Magazine’s 2007 Eddie Adams grant and was recognized as one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2008.

Apart from his photo essays, his website features his Singles portfolio, which I encourage you to visit. His portraits, some candids and others more like environmental portraits, have a photo journalistic "flavor" to them...the one above of Nepalis makes a lovely use of shadows.

Brian Sokol was also featured in Geoffrey Hiller's excellent blog: The New Breed of Documentary Photographers.

Rubin Museum of Art: Kevin Bubriski

Photograph © Kevin Bubriski-All Rights Reserved
From March 14 to October 13, 2008, the Rubin Museum of Art in New York is featuring "Nepal in Black and White", an exhibition of photographs made by Kevin Bubriski.

The photographer arrived in Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1975, and spent about 4 years working in remote villages. He returned in 1984 as a photographer, and with a 4” x 5” view camera, a Nepalese photographic assistant, and two porters, he traveled the length and breadth of the country for the better part of three years.

“The realization that not only my camera but also the modern world was making ever-increasing intrusions into even the most remote areas of Nepal compelled me to document a time and way of life slipping inexorably into the past.” — Kevin Bubriski 1993.

I intend to go to the Rubin to see the exhibit, and will report on it when I do. From the little I've seen of Bubriski's work, his photographs of Nepal are extraordinary.

The exhibition is well-timed, as Nepal is currently in the news with its first election taking place since 1999. The landmark election is for an assembly which will re-write the constitution, and the new body is likely to abolish the 240 years-old Nepali monarchy (which pleases me enormously!).

News: Nepal

Image Copyright © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Nepal's (nominal) king Gyanendra missed his annual blessing from a virgin "goddess" breaking a tradition seen as crucial for the Himalayan monarchy's survival. The Royal Kumari festival is a 250-year-old tradition the king of Nepal needs to attend in order to remain the country's undisputed leader.

The Kumari is a pre-pubescent girl selected from a Buddhist community in Kathmandu valley and taken from her family to live in an ornate palace in the centre of the capital's ancient quarter. She is worshiped as the living incarnation of a Hindu goddess, and her annual blessing is considered a spiritual seal of approval for the palace in the conservative Hindu-majority nation.

The final status of the monarchy is to be decided after elections in November for a body that will rewrite Nepal's constitution....that promises to be interesting since the current government seeks to abolish the monarchy, and for Nepal to become a republic. Few, if any, will miss King Gyanendra.

One of the possible destinations for my 2008 photo expeditions is Nepal and the Kathmandu Valley so I'll be watching these developments with interest.