I came across these amazing print photos of Nepal taken in 1894 and ordered them from someone in Australia who had the originals. I was shocked at how many of these locations that we had been to look essentially the same today as they did in 1894, which is a testament to the timeless nature of such an ancient culture. I am placing photos and screenshots from Art Is Love: Nepal alongside the originals so you can see how similar things look nearly 130 years later.

Their workshop is everything you would not expect to see coming from the west. It was basically an open-aired room down an alleyway with a small handful of craftsmen in bare feet with chisels in hand. You get the sense that they aren’t working with the wood, they are living with it, requesting things from it, communicating with it. As most great craftsmen, it all looks effortless and easy watching them flip the pieces around, sometimes holding it in place with their bare feet as they carve. Truly impressive.

When we arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal on March 2nd of 2020, we were met by our guide Susan Manandhar who ended up filling such an important role in our film exploration of traditional craftspeople still working in the Kathmandu Valley.

I first met Susan on my Nepal trip in 2019 where she served as a guide to the group I was with and was very excited when she agreed to serve not only as our guide in 2020, but that she would also take us to see and film some of Kathmandu and Bhaktapur’s finest craftspeople which would end up including a family of 10th generation wood carvers, thangka painters, singing bowl makers, paper makers and sign painters as well as tours of some of the amazing temples and monasteries in the Valley. She even arranged a one on one meeting with the Kumari living goddess for us.

Having spent my working life in the trade of sign painting, there was a lot of anticipation and curiosity about what kinds of hand painted signs I might be able to discover in Nepal. Although there were clearly digital printed signs gaining a foothold in the visual landscape of Kathmandu, I was thrilled to see that the bulk of signs there are still painted by hand.

I grew up camping in the Texas Hill Country. Both Garner State Park and Enchanted Rock were regular stops and I later camped in the Northwest around Mount Rainer and then spent years motorcycle camping across the American Southwest and Rocky Mountains. I had a lot of great experiences and saw some amazing things. But when a photojournalist friend of mine, Scott Brown, called me up and asked me if I wanted to go ride motorcycles and camp in Nepal my mind raced with all sorts of reasons why I should and shouldn’t say yes. He pressed me for an answer and I asked for 5 minutes to decide. I called him back in 2 minutes and said yes.

So, when I had the opportunity to travel to Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, where the ancient beliefs of Hinduism, Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism converge, I was beyond excited. The swirling nose accompanying the “Buddha Eyes” painted on many of the Buddhist Stupas in Nepal is considered by many Nepali to be a reference to the unity of all faiths.