Viviane Dalles: Kingdom of Mustang

Photo © Viviane Dalles-All Rights Reserved

This is the second time that work by the talented Viviane Dalles is featured on The Travel Photographer blog. Viviane quit her job at the archives of Magnum Agency in 2005, and booked a flight to Tamil Nadu in early 2005, following the devastating tsunami that affected the whole region.  Her clients include LeFigaro Magazine, Le Monde 2, La Tribune, Paris-Match, Internazionale, Le Figaro, Le Monde, The Guardian, among others and she's currently based in Sydney.

Not only is her work talented, but she also traveled and photographed in Mustang, the almost mythical former Kingdom of Lo and now part of Nepal, and has added its gallery to her website.

"Time rolls on, the sun which blurs into the horizon tells us to pick up the pace, otherwise the thick night will keep us prisoner in this immense and silent cage."-Viviane Dalles

Viviane's work in Mustang consists of 31 landscapes, documentary and portrait photography. There's precious little infrastructure in Mustang, and though foreign visitors have been allowed to the region since 1992, tourism to Upper Mustang, similar to Bhutan for example, is regulated.No more than 1000 tourists a year are granted permits.

Rubin Museum of Art: Thomas Kelly's Sadhus

Photo © Thomas L. Kelly- Courtesy The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art

I readily admit to having fallen out of love with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in NYC. Perhaps it was on account of its email newsletters, which for the most part are not terribly informative and are designed to bring you in to see movies and such....giving me the impression that it has lost its way and had become over-commercialized. I know, museums have to make a living, but that's how I feel.

So walking by it yesterday morning, I was glad to see its exterior panels advertising Body Language: The Yogis of India & Nepal, an exhibition of color photographs by Thomas L. Kelly. It certainly seems to be interesting event I hope to visit soon.

I had no idea who Thomas L. Kelly was, but a quick search revealed that his resume is extensive. He first came to Nepal in 1978 as a USA Peace Corps Volunteer, and has since worked as a photo-activist, documenting the struggles of marginalized people and disappearing cultural traditions all over the world. He has been recording the lives of sex workers and the traditions of prostitution across South Asia, and worked for UNICEF, Save the Children Fund (USA), Aga Khan Foundation, amongst others, while his editorial work appeared in the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, and The Observer.

My view on sadhus is a jaundiced one. I've met countless of these vagabond ascetics over my many photo trips to India, and I'm of the view that most of them are charlatans. They are not much better than spongers...exploiting the generosity and gullibility of people who see them as holy men, which they are not. Even those I saw and met at the gigantic Maha Kumbh Mela, and certainly those in Pashupatinah (Kathmandu), are of that ilk. I did encounter real ascetics on a few occasions. One of these occasions was in Varanasi. Not on the ghats (always a magnet for flim-flam artists scamming tourists), but rather at an ashram for elderly sadhus. Here were men who had renounced their worldly belongings, and had opted to live in complete abnegation. Some had been doctors, engineers and accountants. In contrast to the ambulant pseudo sadhus, no stimulants of any kind were used at that ashram.

From a photographer's perspective, these pseudo-sadhus are colorful, exotic and photogenic...the weirder the better...and their way of life and their ganja habits make excellent photography. Whether they are true ascetics or not is not really relevant to us photographers...however it's worth knowing that who we photograph is not really what they purport to be.

The Rubin Museum's blurb on the exhibition has this: "Sadhus renounce worldly life, earthly possessions, and social obligations in order to devote their lives entirely to religious practice and the quest for spiritual enlightenment, making them an important part of the Hindu cultures of South Asia."

While the blurb is perhaps theoretically correct, only a fraction of sadhus really observe that sort of renunciation...but it makes for good reading.

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.