Kathmandu

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Worldwide | Thursday, October 14, 2010 | 5 photos

I should be awarded the Scholarship to Bhutan because I care deeply about humankind and the wonderful diversity of cultures on our planet. My life’s work has been managing relief and development programs, including responses to African famines and the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka. One of the rewards of my work has been to work intimately with a wide range of fantastic people and cultures. I have witnessed incredible changes as the world modernizes and becomes ever more interconnected. These tumultuous changes are inevitable and I wish to document the “here and now” to preserve the memory and beauty that might possibly be lost forever. In my years in Africa I worked intimately with vanishing cultures and I have admired their documentation by Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith in “African Ceremonies”. It is my overriding passion to produce similar documentation for the festivals and World Heritage Sites of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The Valley is aptly described as an open museum with an ever changing tableau of living exhibitions spanning centuries. Both the Heritage Sites and festivals are rapidly changing. As a Kathmandu resident I have been photographically documenting the Valley for the past two years and know it and its people intimately. However, I am not professionally trained and have much to learn on the technical aspects of photography. The scholarship would be a superb opportunity for me to realize my goals and contribute to the documentation of humankind’s astounding heritage. I believe such documentation can positively influence people’s thinking and actions as they address issues of change and cultural identity. My photos are of one of the Valley’s Heritage Sites which is the setting for devout religious worship as well as routine daily economic activity.