Page 116 - The Book For Men Spring/Summer 2024

CHANGPA NOMAD LADAKH, INDIA
THIS IMAGE, FROM INDIA, IS SHOT IN A PLACE WHERE I’VE BEEN DOING
work now for almost three years — a place called Ladakh. It’s an area in the north of the country, between the Pakistani and Chinese borders. Because of that, it’s a very high-tension area, for obvious reasons. It’s Indian territory, but it’s also a state with a very deep and rich history.
And the people I’ve been working with in this area are called Changpa nomads — the woman in this image is a Changpa nomad. In essence, they are kind of refugees who first came into the country from Tibet after the exile [by the Chinese government] in 1959. Now, they’ve been welcomed into the parts of India where they settled. This is now the third generation of Changpa nomads, and the story I’m doing here is about the fading identity of this semi-nomadic tribe.
The woman in this image belongs to one of the villages — villages that are currently going through immense pressure from the outside world. All different kinds of sources are having a negative impact on the Changpa nomads — from capitalism to religion. And, as a result, they believe that their relationships with the spirits are being disturbed. This story is mostly about the disturbance of that spirit and how they believe that climate change is the result of the disturbed relationship between them and the guardian spirits. I could talk about it for days, or weeks, but that’s a short introduction to this image.
WOMAN CARRYING FLOWERS HÀ GIANG LOOP, VIETNAM
THIS PHOTOGRAPH WAS COMMISSIONED FOR A STORY ABOUT A ROAD
trip in the north of Vietnam, a route called the Hà Giang Loop. We took the photo — of a woman carrying flowers — in the Hà Giang area. We’d been doing human interest stories on the people living along that loop, and how they perceived the boom in tourism that’s happened there during the past 10 years.
It’s an area all the way up north, by the Chinese border. It’s very rural, but still quite developed if you compare it to many of the other places I’ve been to. But I keep going back because the people are incredibly welcoming and it’s a beautiful, diverse region. You can feel the influences of China, you can feel the culture coming from Laos and Myanmar. It’s kind of a mix of all these South Asian places in one region.
Vietnam is very dear to my heart. A couple of weeks ago, I received a beautiful email from a woman who was from Vietnam, but was living in Europe and didn’t have the means to get back to her home country. It was about another image of mine that taps into the nostalgic spirit of Vietnam as a country, and also Hanoi as a city. She said in the email that the photo provoked a strong sense of belonging to a home country in her. Seeing the image almost made her cry, and brought up memories of her childhood. And that shows the true power of storytelling — of visual, photographic storytelling on an emotional level.
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