Nepal: A Country in the Clouds

When I was young there were two places in the world I wanted to visit. The first was New York. I’ll write about that another time, let’s just say for now I was on the train going there, when a chemical plant caught fire in Buffalo, flames drifted across the tracks, halted the train and hours later I ended up where I’d started. Years later – I got there. The other place was Egypt. That trip was all booked and paid, then there were shootings at Hatshepsut’s Temple, our foreign office advised against travel, invalidating the insurance so the destination was changed, (- I did get to Egypt eventually as you know from past posts!) so at moderately short notice I ended up in Nepal. I’m glad I did.

This was at the height of my interest in moving images, as it turned out it was to be the last film I shot and completed on film rather than video, although I didn’t know that at the time. My journey was recorded, edited, written and produced by yours truly. I’m pleased to say the resulting film was good enough to win a couple of awards. Then, the world “went digital”, my film-making became more commercial and now that I look back on it, also spelled the start of the end for me. While I went on to make many more video’s I never loved the medium as much as film, some of the magic had gone, and with it, a bit of my enthusiasm.

On this trip I had four cameras with me. That was not un-usual in those days. For the next couple of posts I’m going to share some from the “B/W Camera”. I’d like to tell you what camera that was, but the truth is I can’t remember! The images are on Ilford FP4 plus. I’d probably developed it in Paterson Acutol.

One of the beauties of film is that we tend to keep the film, don’t chop out individual frames, and so the good and the bad are kept. This means that, perhaps unlike digital, an edit of those images can change, as the photographer changes with time. That’s certainly true in my case. The other great thing is that I can now re-visit these images, scan and edit them as I could have never done when they were made, the technology has moved on, but the film still holds it’s original quality.

I had a wonderful time in Nepal, the people were the most friendly, open and generous I’ve ever met. Wonderful people. If I was offered the chance to re-visit, I’d go tomorrow. I learned much from these people. Most had very little, yet their happiness was obvious. Slightly worn clothes or a crumbling wall was of no consequence. Plumbing, assuming there was any, was of little concern to any normal person, a tap that brought was was all that was needed. I learned humility.

Ultimately I would have liked to have stayed longer there than I did, Nepal stayed with me longer than I with it, it’s still with me! Scanning these images brought back many memories. Another magic property of photography.