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.