Faces of Nepal#
People of Nepal - The friendly, the proud, the examining and the shy look
Nepal is a mixture of people on the Southern slopes of the Himalayas. Influences from Tibet in the North and India in the South have been mixing for thousands of years, producing a unique blend of cultures, religions, languages and social structures. Those of us who look at the people without preoccupation will realize that the Nepalese are participating with us in emotions and feelings, yet have gone through and been influenced through very different experiences compared to the western world. Not surprising, this makes them different in many ways.
There is no religion that forbids Nepalese to look into our eyes or our cameras. Peasants, city people, monks and pilgrims, rich and poor, meet us and for a moment become the center of our attention. The author believes in what Lykaeus says in Goethe’s Faust, second part: We are born to see, but our destiny is to see deeper that eyes can do. This is how one can get to know people and patterns in other parts of the world: somehow the faces seen merge into a general picture of the culture concerned. And yes, the camera captures the fleeting moment for a long time.
