curatorial note. for tomorrow's "THE WEEK"

 A short Curator's Note 

Nepal and Australia : Twenty years of restoring Sight  is a photographic celebration   of a close collaboration between  Nepal's  well  known  Tilganga Institute  of Ophthalmology  and its Australian  partner,  The Fred Hollows Foundation.   It is an attempt to visually explore two decades of what has become Nepal's biggest success story.  A very visible story of a great vision.  A vision come true. A vision that is about restoring vision to those who need it most and who do not have the means to pay for  its  surgical restoration.

Tilganga, as is it popularly known, is more than just another Eye Hospital in Kathmandu. It is an internationally known and respected Institution that has done more for preventable blindness in Nepal  (and  other  developing countries)  than anyone would have dared to  dream of.  But then, the two Doctors at the heart of the first Dreaming – Sanduk Ruit and the late Fred Hollows - are more than dreamers. They are doers who made their  Himalayan dreams come true.

 

Working on this exhibition was a dream comes true for me too.  Within a week of my landing in Kathmandu I had been driven off, on a 15 hour, hilly and bumpy  drive (some of it in total darkness) to  Dhorumba.   I was  to  photograph one of Tilganga's countless remote Eye Camps. That camp was an 'eye opener'  for me, in so many ways. It was  the beginning of a relationship with Dr Ruit that I treasure.    

This exhibition, then, is just a small payback for the eye opening experiences I have had with him.

Working on it was also an eye opener. There are photographic treasures buried deep in Tilganga.   And like all treasures, they are not easy to find. I am sure I have not seen all the Photographs that Tilganga has in its vast visual collection.  A collection that can certainly do with a better photo retrieval system.

  Photographs shot by well known and internationally acclaimed photographers like Ami Vitale, Michael Amendolia were easier to find. And  because of the Australian funding of the exhibition, I had to foreground  the Australians –  Anne Crawford,  Penny Bradfield , Jon Reid  and even a well  know media star like Ray Martin. And their work too, was easy to access .

Michael  has been shooting Tilganga from the beginning.   And luckily for me some of his original black and white prints were easily found from the mountain of photographs that Tilganga has.  His earliest pictures from Vietnam and Mustang made the show.  They have become the focus of the exhibition.

I did feel a little uncomfortable with too much of a western gaze and tried to locate Nepali photographers who might have photographed Tilganga. It turned out to be a hard task because they are, strangely enough, an almost nonexistent entity.  When I asked Dr. Ruit about the lacuna in the local gaze, he was quite direct in the answer he gave.  Nepali photographers, according to him, don't seem ready to invest the length of time and the effort needed  to attend  remote camps.

 

That is something local photographers need to wake up to. They have to invest the time and make an effort to make the gaze on Tilganga more local and home grown.   

The Western photographers  looked at  Nepal only through its Mountain and pahari  people.  One of the them actually said that the people from  the Terai  looked too "Indian" .  

It is stereotyping like this that needs to be countered by the local knowledge of  Nepali photographers because even the  'Medical' Archives of an Institution like Tilganga can create  and add to the stereotypes of Nepal and Nepalis  .

                                                                                               

                                         An "Indian" Nepali ?? Eye Camp , Hetauda,  Nepal. 

                             Neither Hindu nor Buddhist but still  a Nepali patient in Hetauda.