Alexis Pazoumian | Sadhu Hundred

©Alexis Pazoumian-All Rights Reserved

Sadhus...depending on your point of view or experience, they can be spiritual ascetics, devout mystics, philosophic vagabonds, or homeless charlatans. I can say that many of the sadhus I've encountered (and I have met a lot during my countless travels in India) are a bit of all these descriptions, but most are charlatans, preying on the generosity, spirituality and superstition of lay people...many of whom are equally poor. That said, they are photogenic and they know it.

It is estimated there are 4 to 5 million sadhus in India, and these belong to two main sects: the Shaiva sadhus, who are ascetics devoted to Shiva, and Vaishnava sadhus, who are renouncers devoted to Vishnu (including Rama and Krishna). Although some sub sects have properties that generate revenue to sustain members, most sadhus rely on donations, and poverty and hunger are realities for many sadhus.

Alexis Pazoumian's Sadhu Hundred is a photo gallery of sadhu portraits; some of which were photographed at the Pashupatinath Temple located on the banks of the Bagmati River in Kathmandu. It's one of the most significant Hindu temples of Shiva in the world.

You'll note the sadhus following Shiva wear a tilak of three horizontal lines across the forehead, while the tilak of Vaishnava sadhus usually include two or more vertical lines resembling the letter U, which symbolizes Vishnu's foot.

Alexis Pazoumaian is a photographer in France who, after completing a two-year course in a graphics school, turned to photography. He spent six months documenting and living in one of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas,  and was finalist in a contest by “Paris Match” for photojournalism students.

His clients include Agence Elan, Premicefilms, Elie Saab, Maje, Hilldale production, Toshiba, Caviar Agency, We love Art, Monsieur White, Société Général, Maison Sauvage, Grand Palais, Groupe Vendôme, and Agence moderne. 

Drew Doggett | Omo Valley & Slow Road To China

Photo © Drew Doggett-All Rights Reserved

Idly thumbing the pages of a society magazine aimed at the residents on Long Island, I stumbled on an article about Drew Doggett's horse photography, which mentioned that the photographer had trekked in Nepal and Ethiopia.

I visited his website which showcases a couple of Drew's galleries that are a perfect fit to feature on The Travel Photographer blog. The first gallery is Omo: Expressions of a People...which in 2012 was accepted into the Smithsonian African Art Museum’s photographic archives. These monochrome photographs are influenced by the photographer's having trained in fashion photography as an assistant to Steven Klein and Mark Seliger, and is the second of several expeditions Doggett has planned as part of a ten-year project.

Slow Road to China is a photo gallery of the inhabitants and mountains of the Humla region of northwestern Nepal. Also in black and white, these images document a disappearing Tibetan culture.

Photo © Drew Doggett-All Rights Reserved

Humla is considered one of the most remote and isolated regions in Nepal, reachable only by foot or small aircrafts which irregularly land in the district head quarter, Simikot. It is situated high in the Himalaya, in the Karnali Zone bordering the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Its northern part is populated by a Tibetan ethnic group, referred to as Lama in the region.

Taylor Weidman: Mustang

Photo © Taylor Weidman-All Rights Reserved

"Mustang is arguably the best-preserved example of traditional Tibetan life left in the world."

And so says Taylor Weidman in the recently featured article on NPR's website.

The title of the article is Can Photos Save A Vanishing Culture? especially as the younger generation in this Kingdom is becoming increasingly disconnected from its traditions, because those who can afford to go to school leave for neighboring Kathmandu or India, and do not return.

I do not believe that photographs can save a vanishing culture, but if "save" means and is used in the context of preservation, then yes...they do. In the case of the Omo Valley tribes, as an example, the literal influx of tourists and their cameras has impacted the traditions of these proud people. I have seen (and featured) a number of photographs of Omo Valley tribes people wearing all sorts of headgear and dress that are not indigenous to their culture...and were more akin to avant garde fashion models, set up that way by over imaginative photographers. This type of photography is not 'saving' but exploiting.

Taylor Weidman is a photographer and founder of the Vanishing Cultures Project. He worked with a number of magazines and NGOs, and his photographs were exhibited in Geneva, Montreal and New York. Graduating with a Master's in Photojournalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communication at Syracuse University, he worked at The Christian Science Monitor, then completed a long-term photography project about the Tibetan Kingdom of Lo as a Fulbright Fellow in Nepal.

Kishor K. Sharma: The Rautes of Nepal

Photos © Kishor K. Sharma - All Rights Reserved

Seeing this on my Facebook page made me break my traveling 'omerta'...it's a gallery titled Living In The Mist: The Last Nomads of Nepal by photographer Kishor Sharma.

According to an entry in Wikipedia, the Raute people are a nomadic ethnic group of Nepal. They are known especially for their hunting of langur and macaque monkeys for subsistence, and gather wild forest tubers, fruits, and greens on a regular basis, but do no farming. For grain, they trade handmade wooden bowls and boxes to local farmers. It's estimated that the Raute nomads do not exceed 200.

The Rautes emphasize that they wish to remain full-time foragers and have no wish to assimilate into the surrounding farming population.

Kishor K. Sharma, is a self-taught photographer/photojournalist based in Kathmandu. He completed his studies in Business, and joined the College of Journalism and Mass Communication in Kathmandu to pursue Master’s degree in Mass Communication and Journalism. He was invited to attend the 2010 Angkor Photography Workshop and took workshops with Antoine d'Ágata, Philip Blenkinshop and Munem Wasif, among others.

Al Jazeera Documents Mustang

Tibetan Buddhism still survives intact in Upper Mustang - a once forbidden kingdom high in the Nepalese Himalayas. Here is Al Jazeera's Steve Chao's documentary on his travels to Mustang, the former Kingdom of Lo and now part of Nepal.

Mustang was once an independent kingdom, but tied by language and culture to Tibet. From the 15th century to the 17th century, its strategic location granted Mustang control over the trade between the Himalayas and India. It now relies on tourism, animal husbandry and trade.

I also noted the recent death of Michel Peissel, who was a French explorer and an ethnologist who devoted a good part of his life to recording the culture of Tibet. He managed to gain access to the Mustang region in the early 1960s; which led to his book “Mustang: A Lost Tibetan Kingdom.

Al Jazeera also features a wonderful gallery of photographs of Mustang.

Readers of The Travel Photographer's blog may recall that I wrote of a cashier at a corner store near my building, who told me she was born in Mustang! A Mustang born woman working in a corner store in New York's West Village. How incredible is that?!

Francisco de Souza: Travel Photography

Photo © Francisco de Souza-All Rights Reserved

The website of Francisco de Souza is populated with galleries of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam...large images which grab viewers the way images should. None of this silly small photographs to "protect my work" from Francisco. He wants to show his images, and he does.

His biography tells us he was born and raised in Zimbabwe, where he started to photograph his Shona tribal neighbours since he was eleven. Subsequently displaced from his Zimbabwean home, he travelled to many developing countries in Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and South East Asia. It is there he started to actively work with and support Non Government Organisations in Indonesia, India and Zimbabwe.

Francisco's work has been shortlisted in the Digital Photographer of the Year competition in 2009, and he received a Diploma in Photography from The Photography Institute of New Zealand in 2010.

In his India gallery, Francisco features an elderly woman in a red sari, possibly a Gujarati or Rajasthani tribal judging from her tattoos, being helped unto the back of a truck...a perfect capture in time and motion.

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.