Workshop with Philip Blenkinsop

5-day workshop & reportage project

Kathmandu is often still stereotyped with postcard images of durbar squares and prayer flags, despite daily evolution and redefinition on social, political, economic and other spheres. In the face of an overhaul of identity, many of us and many around the world choose to continue to see the city in the mind’s eye, informed by a mix of postcards and newspaper headlines.

Seeing Kathmandu by smelling Kathmandu, feeling Kathmandu, the joy, despair, and hope of its people, in an attempt to see the unseen, to see energy, to see light, to see change, and layers and layers of emotion and information, and to find moments of human interaction that go beyond what headlines would mark as significant, to go beyond seeing landscape and architecture.

This is what 24 young photography students of mixed cultural backgrounds attempted to do, by embarking on a photographic journey for five days.

The students, from Bangladesh (Pathshala), Nepal (photo.circle) and Norway (Oslo University College), were lead by photographers Philip Blenkinsop (Australia/ UK) and Munem Wasif (Bangladesh) and the initiative was hosted in Kathmandu by photo.circle.

The resulting images represent life in Kathmandu with youthful exuberance amidst brick and concrete, early starts in the stealth of the winter mist, schoolgirls in pig tails, last rites and motherhood and family. They are successful in telling the story of a place and a people in little snippets of daily life that are honest and simple and that save us from a shallow experience that we are at risk of succumbing to, regardless of whether we are visitors or permanent residents.

Workshop participants: Anette Karlsen, Arifur Rahman, Gaurav Dhwaj Khadka, Håkon Jacobsen, Jannatul Mawa, Joacim Jørgensen, Kishor Sharma, Martin S Lyngstad, Md Anisul Hoque, Md. Kauser Haider, Md. Tuhin Hossain, Narendra Mainali, Nurul Ryad Han, Øyvind A Anderser, Pallav Pant, Rasel Chowdhury, Rokshana Islam Beauty, Sailendra Kharel, Sayed Ashif Mahmud, Sean Meling Murray, Shreyans Tamang, Sita Mademba, Soumitra Barua, Syed Ashraful Alom

This project has been supported by The Norweign Foreign Affairs.