After
ten years of travel and photography in the Himalayan
region, I was continually disappointed with the results
of traditional photographic prints depicting Himalayan
cultural scenes. These images were always "too perfect,”
lacking the essence, the inherent chaos, and the
spellbinding reality of the Himalayan region. I longed
for a process by which I could produce images with a
more “real” feel, a texture of sorts Himalaya. The
Lokta Project is an attempt to produce such images.
Each image in the
collection begins its life as a moment in Himalayan time
captured on 35mm film. The resulting image is then
scanned and corrected within Photoshop. (I do not change
the image itself. Rather, I employ Photoshop to
re-create the original image in much the same way as one
would work in a traditional, wet darkroom.) Finally, the
finished image is printed with my Epson 2000P Archival
Inkjet printer on a sheet of handmade lokta paper
from Nepal. The print is then matted on another sheet of
heavyweight lokta.
The final images in
The Lokta Project gain a genuine texture and feel
unavailable in traditional processes. The resulting
print is far from "too perfect," while being perfectly
Himalayan.
