HIMALAYAN PASSAGE : Scenes From a Vanishing World

In the mid 1970s, I traveled alone through the mountains of Nepal, living out of a backpack and relying on the hospitality of Himalayan villagers and herders for food and shelter. I spoke Nepali and found that I needed very little to live happily: a warm plate of food by a smoky fire or space for my bedroll under a shepherd’s rock-overhang shelter.

As a water technician with the Peace Corps, I lived and worked for four years in remote Nepali villages, the commonplaces of modern life--cars, electricity, plumbing--becoming faint memories of another time. The rituals of mountain life were my daily reality, and my village friends and acquaintances the most important people in my life.

I was unprepared for the sense of separation I felt when I returned to the United States, and I found that the vivid memories of my Nepal years faded as I struggled to reorient myself to modern life. Photographs were my one enduring link--like family photos in the wallet, they reminded me of those I cared for while I was far away.

In 1984, I returned. With a view camera, tripod, sheet-film holders, a photographic assistant and two porters, I traveled the length and breadth of the country for the better part of three years, making exposures. The bulky equipment made it impossible for me to repeat my earlier solo travel, but the camera setup placed me in the midst of village life; water buffalo, goats and curious children brushed past, occasionally bumping the tripod legs.

In many cases, the camera recorded people who had prepared themselves and carefully presented the image of themselves they wished others to see. In others, it documented subjects with little self-consciousness or understanding of the photographic process.

When I printed the results on returning to the United States, I realized I had taken a private and unique essence of each person out into a world far beyond their mountain villages. And even as I watched, a time and a way of life was slipping inexorably into the past.